DON’T FLIRT WITH DEMONS
THE MISADVENTURES OF UKOBACH AND ELSIE
CHAPTER
ONE
Tonight,my eyebrows taught me several life lessons.
One: no cheating, piece-of-shit ex-boyfriend was worth breaking your apartment’s open-fire rules. Because it will set off the interior fire alarms, and then the sprinklers will come on and soak everything. Every. Damn. Thing.
Two: do not share the bottle of vodka you’ve been sipping all night with the fire pit you created using pictures of you and your good-for-nothing douche of an ex. It will flare up like a massive fireball and burn off your eyebrows and lashes.
Three: as you pour on your vodka, don’t slurringly curse that slimy fucker to Hell, and accidentally summon a demon. Apparently, my drunken sobbing must’ve sounded a little like Latin.
I rubbed the nubbly stubs of my eyebrows and put down the bottle of vodka.Shit.I’d had way too much to drink. I’d missed the puking stage and headed straight for alcohol poisoning, because my drunken delusion was naked. And hot.
And hung.
I dragged my eyes up from his huge dick.
“Thank you,” he snarled.
“What?”
“You said I had a huge dick. The human response to such a statement is ‘thank you’, is it not?”
I wiped the water from my face as the sprinklers continued to rain down on my head, making me feel like I was a drowned rat. I stepped toward my tiny galley kitchen and poured the rest of the vodka down the sink. It might have been a bit of a symbolic gesture, considering there was less than a mouthful remaining, but it was all about admitting you had a problem, or taking small steps, or whatever was the first step of realizing you’d messed up.
I had a problem, all right. I’d drunk so much that I’d killed all my brain cells, and now I was seeing hot guys in my living room.
I dropped the bottle in the sink. “Fuck you, Cade, you asshole.” I was going to turn around and the naked hot guy with the horns was going to be gone. I was going to make some coffee, and then when the hot firefighters responded to the fire alarm, I’d pretend to be passed out so they’d carry me down the stairs of my shitty apartment block like knights in fluorescent armor. And there woulddefinitelybe no demon.
Let’s face it, I wasn’t that lucky. This wasn’t a romcom where I’d break up with my shitty boyfriend and suddenly have a hot dude thrust into my lap. Or maybe thrust between my thighs.
Heh.I was funny.
“That was quite humorous.”
I whirled around, and the naked guy with the huge dick and horns was still there.Oh shit. Oh shit, shit, shit, shit.I scrubbed a hand over my face again. Nope, still there. I rubbed my eyes once more and pinched my arm hard enough to bruise. Nope, still there.
“You’re actually here.”
He inclined his head, his horns shining like onyx in my downlights. “You summoned me.”
I scrabbled back toward the other wall. “I did not!” I yelled, but my words were still slurred, so it sounded more like, “I slid knot!”
Okay, maybe I had. Who knew what I’d been drunkenly wailing?
“Well, I’m, uh… sorry for the inconvenience, but you can go now.”
He canted his head to the left a little. “You did not create a summoning circle.” He stepped toward me a little further. “You cannot command me to go back. You cannot command me to do anything.”
Fear began to burn off the alcohol, and the demon remained. Nakedly remained. “Are you going to kill me and eat my gizzards? Steal my soul and take it to Hell? Oh Jesus, are you going to dismember me and bathe in my blood?”
He frowned, looking me over, starting at my feet and slowly moving up over my waist—which, according to Cade, now had too many lumpy bits. Up to my breasts, which were not quite as gravity-defying as I’d like, because who wore a bra when they were day drinking? No one, that’s who.
Finally, he settled on my face, which was a little too round, with eyes that were a little too big. I looked like a kewpie doll. But not in a cute way. In a disconcerting way.
