“Fair enough, love,” Alastair remarked. He made no attempt to mask the way his eyes caressed her legs (or the space between), her hips, her waist, but he was most taken with her eyes. She wanted danger, stepped right up to it, to him, and claimed he was only something more to look at. His response was a feral grin, one that was only just barely brought to heel. The line of her neck drew his attention and he wanted to sink his teeth into it as he fucked her into her husband’s mattress. But, they had a supposedly haunted building to explore, he and Mrs. Whitley Josephine. “It won’t be killin’ any cats today, that curiosity.”
Her laugh was a lovely sound, with an unexpected purity to it that made him smile in a way that wasn’t ferocious. Whatever purity she had left in her, if any at all, he wanted to devour it as he was a glutton for such things. Josephine was powerful, from the curve of her lips to the sharpness of her eyes and even the way she didn’t mind at all to stand close enough for him to touch. Recklessness had never been a weakness for him, for he saw it as a factor to his strength. She had taken many to bed, destroyed them in a moment of bliss and recreated them out of nothing, and he admired her for it. Her insatiable curiosity was just another piece of her that endeared her to him.
I think I’d be up for just about anything.
A low hum of pleasure made a home in the demon’s throat as he rounded behind her and ghosted his hand just above the small of her back. She was alive under his faintest touch, even through her clothes, and the warmth drew him in close to breathe against the skin of her neck. Underneath her faint perfume, she smelled like sin and he wanted to press his own scent into her with his mouth and the press of his fingers. His dark eyes fluttered shut for a moment as he breathed her in, committed her scent to memory. It was animal, the way he wanted her, but he wouldn’t give into instinct just yet.
“Oh, I am happy to hear that,” he murmured to her. “In that case, I’ll call you anything you want, Josephine. Think you might like that, yeah?”
He breathed his own laugh against her and stepped away from her to drag his fingertips along her waist before he ascended the short steps to the empty Hall. As interesting as the dead were, with her there, staring straight at him, he was suddenly very interested in the living. Alastair leaned back against the door and tapped his knuckles against the wood. A playful smile invited Josephine to come near as he cracked the door open with a low creak.
“Fancy that, no one’s answered,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t think they’d mind if we made ourselves at home then, d’you?”
Danger had not necessarily been a centerpiece in Josephine’s life. She had made dangerous decisions, to be sure, but it was if every lesson she had taught herself was either amplified or forgotten the moment she stepped into Paradise. Even her time spent as a stripper was nothing compared to how alive she felt every time she felt a demon touch her skin. It made her want to burst, or ignite, and the ashes she could possibly turn into after never crossed her mind. All of it should have terrified her, but it was these moments, the ones that seemed to mirror her life before so easily, that made her feel sane again. The traveling eyes, the ghost touches, the animal instincts--those were the things her mind could comprehend. They made the demons human. They made monsters like Alastair turn into monsters that had already possessed her.
Every touch, every movement, every breath Alastair took made Josephine want to shout, or scream. None of which were horrible things to think, not with him. She had heard her rumors about the demon with a flirtatious southern drawl, and eyes that could pierce ones soul. He was not completely unknown to her, and maybe that was why she was so calm when she felt his fingertips lightly touch her waist, as if he had done it so many times before. Alastair was dangerous.
“With a voice like yours, most names could probably suit me,” Jo said, a smile still on her lips, and eyes watching him as he approached the Town Hall door. She moved towards him, slowly, her legs sure and steady as she hoped that what lay in the building was not worse than what already lay outside of it. “I don’t think they’d quite have a choice,” she responded, as she took control and opened the door herself. Jo had expected the task to be harder than it was, but it opened easily, revealing a sight she had expected to see. It was desolate inside. A graveyard. Life had no business being in a building with so much death written all over it. Each wall seemed to cry out in pain, to reach out and try to grab her.
“What happened here?” Josephine said, her eyes traveling behind her towards her companion. Expecting an answer was presumptuous, but it was easy to tell that Alastair was in a lighter mood than the rumors had reported.














