Women Who Tempt
"Is everything on this island tropical themed?"
From his post at the door, Darian thought it a fair question. He had steered clear of tiki huts, floating bars, dueling pianos, and the cloying strains of Jimmy Buffett tunes, which left him with little in the way of choice. This bar was less thematic than most, but even it boasted a palm tree made of a neon tubing and a specialty drink served in a coconut. He took off a lightweight coat and hung it from a hook near his chair... A hook which, on closer inspection, was shaped like a pelican beak.
So that issue was settled, at least. He was in hell.
Upon sitting down, he straightened his tie and looked around. Roxanne, the client he chased to the island, was more adept at staying off his radar than Darian could've imagined. She was not a guest in any hotel. He concluded that she'd settled herself in for a long-term stay, perhaps taken up a job and an apartment share (it was either that or admit the worse alternative-- that she'd already left the island, leaving him picking sand out of his teeth, without a clue as to her next destination).
Every morning when Bethany awoke in this new world and this new life she had to remind herself that it was all just a passage of time and sooner rather than later she was going to break free and do what she wanted to do. She just had to bide her time and biding her time meant keeping her job as manager at this... shambles of a bar.
The whole drink in a coconut thing was enough to send shudders down her spine.
The bar was buzzing and everybody was working hard, Beth was in the process of settling a dispute at the till and calmly talking a patron down and thus restoring their faith and loyalty in the bar.
Idiots, every single one of them.
Since Bethany had taken over this other woman's life she'd changed everything about her including the length of her hair, how she kept her nails, what clothes she wore and her makeup choices. All of which had only served to make this Bethany more noticeable and far more in the forefront than she had been before.
"Serve the customers," Bethany muttered to the young brunette more interested in talking up good looking men than doing her job. "Now," Bethany all but bit out.
The brunette in question rolled her eyes and slid up the bar to settle in front of Darian. "What can I get for you, handsome?"
"Not your telephone number," he said, stone-faced as he studied the back war of the ball where the bottles were stored. "Bourbon, neat. Start a tab." He swallowed. The Adam's Apple jumped above the starched and ironed collar of his white shirt. The tie was flint gray with the tiniest of silver geometric patterning. Nothing flamboyant, nothing to be remembered if anyone asked questions of him later. Underneath the bar, he ran a hand over his aching knee. He did his best not to favor it in public places. The last thing he wanted was to elicit unwanted sympathy. But sometimes the ache gnawed at his composure and made it difficult to concentrate on anything but Roxanne, or whoever was the newest thorn in his side.
He supposed that was by design. It wouldn't stop until he caught up to them and collected. Darian could swallow a bottle of pills and it wouldn't change that.
The brunette looked rather taken aback before looking insulted, rolling her eyes. "Neat bourbon coming right up." It was as she turned that she mouthed 'dick' to her fellow barmaid, stopping only when she found herself on the receiving end of a glare from Bethany.
Stupid girls. Bethany shook her head in despair. It was only as she allowed herself to observe the bar that it felt like somebody had reached into her chest and given her heart a hard and very sudden squeeze.
Darian.
Just seeing his face brought every single memory rushing back to the surface and for a moment Bethany's hand dropped, fingertips brushing over her now flat, toned stomach. It ached, the memories, the sense of loss, and she hated it. Hated that at one time she'd had everything and she had next to nothing.
He couldn't be her Darian, he would have sought her out by now if he had been. This one... he held himself differently, favored something, maybe she was imagining things? Did she go over and speak to him or forever hold her tongue? Bethany wouldn't be who she was without taking risks and decided right there and then she would bite the bullet, talk to the man who in another place had once been her everything.
She closed the distance, snatching up a glass to pour a drink that she hoped hadn't changed from one universe to another. Noticing the look of confusion from the brunette, Bethany simply said, "I'll take care of this." Once the drink was poured Bethany inhaled a breath, steeling her shoulders, before simply resting the glass in front of Darian. "A neat bourbon."
He looked up. An eyebrow lifted. "I've chased off the help, haven't I?"
He put his fingertips on the glass and pulled it closer. There was no ice, which was a good thing, as it seemed that something as ordinary as ordering a drink 'neat' often confused bartenders. Half the time, the drink arrived watered down by the tap. He sipped it and set the glass on its cocktail napkin. "And now you've come to serve me and ask if I'm going to give your staff a difficult time, no doubt." He worked his teeth together. The muscles in his clean-shaven jaw worked inside his skin. His accent was ordinary. There was a practiced northeastern crispness to it, as if he'd drained off every noticeable inflection to give himself the kind of voice one heard in professional recordings.
Darian looked at the woman. She was a natural blonde. Brown-eyed and fair, rather than the unhealthy tan other women favored. She had a spareness of figure that was appealing in its honesty. He would rather deal with her than the inflated brunette pouting from a distance.
Bethany cast a look over her shoulder at the young brunette and returned her attention to Darian, shrugging her shoulders. "The help isn't all it's cracked up to be." She folded her arms and leaned back, smirking ever so slightly. "I was looking for a reason to fire her, think I might have found it."
She had no time for idiots, especially vapid idiots.
This was strange, speaking to Darian again. It wasn't as difficult as she thought it might be, he couldn't have changed that much, could he? It was still... very weird.
"What will you put on her pink slip?" he asked. He rested his wrist against the sharp edge of the bar. He wore a watch despite having little concern for time. It was for appearances, to be flawless, just like the expensive quality of his suit, the leather of his shoes, the hair that looked as if it had been cut that day. "Is she fired for calling me handsome or calling me a dick? Yes, I heard. My ears are quite something."
The brunette hadn't spoken the word 'dick' aloud, a fact he counted on the blonde not to have noticed.
Darian saw her arms folded on her chest. She looked guarded despite the carefree smirk. He tamped down the urge to dig in her head and satisfy his curiosity. It would only serve to distract him. Already he was being more conversational than his normal wont.
Bethany glanced over her shoulder at the brunette and lifted an eyebrow in thought, considering what could and couldn't be put on her pink slip. "Unprofessional conduct bordering on annoying. Not to mention the fact she's lazy and never turns up to work on time." If this had been Vegas or Chicago, Bethany would have dealt with her personally, but for now she had to play by the rules as much as she hated it. "And between you and me, she's fired for calling you handsome and for calling you a dick." She offered a sharp smirk, a smirk that seemed misplaced on such a young face. "And your ears must be quite something considering she only mouthed the word."
She inhaled a breath and cast her gaze towards a fractious exchange between two men and narrowed her eyes, wondering if it would explode.
Darian's eyebrow lifted. He gave her the full weight of his attention, taking his fingers off the glass of bourbon. The tips of them curled into his palm and rubbed it. "Oh? Hmm. Perhaps I've heard it said before. Niceties," his mouth bit out the word, "Are not considered my strong suit." His controlled demeanor coached his face back into neutrality. This was a banal version of Darian that Bethany had only seen shades of... The last traces left behind after his 'coming out' of sorts in the Nevada desert. In this world, certain things, like liberation from the man that controlled him and 'purification' through a Bride of Leviathan, had never happened.
He was not a shell, just a tightly wound creature. No one had ever released the pressure valve. No one had ever loved him, or been loved by him.
"Not yours either, are they?" He studied her. There were signs: The haughty angle of her chin, the tight smirk, the preciseness of her movements, the razor-sharp look of her fingernails. The blonde's eyes were closed windows.
This Darian was different, more restricted and she was pretty sure if his tie was any tighter then he might not be able to breathe. A part of her itched to reach out and loosen the tie, just like she used to in the other universe, but for the moment she refrained. Self control, not her strongest of suits, but something that could be applied if she so choose to.
She breathed out and leaned against the bar, forearms mere inches away from his, and just smirked. "No," she shared quietly. "I've never been one for the niceties. They bore me for the most part."
Bethany's fingers tapped a rhythm out on her arms before one hand reached out to right one of the slightly skewed cuff links on this Darian's shirt cuffs. "People bore me for the most part."
He flinched when she touched his shirt, mostly from surprise. He watched her straighten his cuff link. Darian's look passed from the metal piece to her manicured fingers and her face. 'Thank you' came to mind, a cultural influence absorbed from humans, but he didn't say it. Instead, he traced through his memories and found that he couldn't remember ever uttering the phrase. Strange, then, that he nearly said it.
"If people bore you, how do you pass the time? With animals?" The corners of his mouth twitched in an almost-smile. "Are you a pet lover?" What was her name? He concentrated and came up with the letter 'B'.
Bethany bit out a small laugh and shook her head. "Far from it." She tilted her head and looked at him through her lashes, offering a slow smile. "I find ways to amuse myself, I always do." She had spent the better part of her weekend playing with people in bars and clubs, toying with their emotions and turning them against one another. If Darian was looking around in her head at this point he'd be able to see.
She propped her chin in her hand, curling her long fingers around the curve of her jaw. "How about you? Do you do anything for fun or is it all business?"
He hadn't been looking, but the urge was present. Darian could smell her. Usually, this close to women, all he smelled was fear, blood, sweat, or vomit. The blonde had a softer fragrance. "Business is all I am," he said. "Strategy, transactions, and execution." He was a dealer of pleasure and pain, but a bare minimum of it touched him. He watched her cup her chin.
Look inside her. Subtly, he opened his palm and summoned an image he only allowed himself to see, which was a reflection of what went on in her head. The ache in Darian's leg flared to life.
Alcohol, lurid dancing, the angry interjections of people she duped, the slice of a knife and a red line forming behind it. Darian's eyes narrowed. There was an image tucked behind all that, but it was blurry compared to the rest. He saw a pair of lovers. He couldn't quite make out their faces, but he thought, based on the perspective, that one of them was her. Bethany.
"Your business is your fun," he said. "One and the same."
Bethany's lips curled into a smile as Darian came to conclusions about her. "Never hurts to mix a little business with a lot of pleasure." She'd mastered the art, mastered the balance and found a way to make it work for her. "And all business and no play makes you a dull boy." She wet her lower lip and the tips of her fingers lifted and tapped against the pale skin of her cheek. "Or so they say."
She found that her gaze kept being drawn back to that tie and her fingers still itched to reach out and pull it slightly askew.
Darian looked at her face. His eyebrows furrowed. "You find me dull?" Even the way he asked was dull. He seemed utterly unaware of it.
He looked at his open hand again, which he kept near the glass, not wanting it to be obvious when he looked inside. He saw her mental picture of grabbing onto a tie and loosening it until it hung crooked from a man's neck. It was a gray tie. His tie. Darian's hazel eyes looked at her with a new kind of intrigue. "You're attracted to me," he said. "You looked down on her for it, but you're thinking of the same thing."
But it wasn't a strictly sexual image, which he recognized. There was affection in what Bethany imagined doing to his clothes. Darian had an impeccable memory, but he found himself wondering if he had met her before. Was she an old client? "Have we met?"
Bethany's brow drew together as she considered his question, wondering how to phrase it so he didn't think her mad. "Not here," she replied with a shake of his head. "Another place, another time. I don't quite belong here." She'd free-fallen into this life and built herself up again, trying to find some sort of footing in this new world. "Believe it or not but in another world, you and I are quite the couple." Her lips twitched in the corners and Bethany breathed through a lingering feeling of sadness for what she had lost and for having gained so little in return.
"I suppose you think me mad."
Though not a strictly supernatural skill, Darian's internal lie detector was good, and the woman gave all signs of speaking the truth. He maintained his close proximity to her by leaning on the bar, which he normally did not do. "I know of multiple dimensions," he said, turning his glass of bourbon in a circle. "Most of them heavens or hells. I didn't begin here and I haven't always looked as I am. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you've come here from another Earth."
He studied her features. Could he have known her there? Been involved with her? The concept of building a relationship with a human was foreign. "What did I get from it?" he asked, boiling it down to the only thing he usually cared for. "What did you?" He remembered the image of bodies interlocked. "Did we have sex?"
Bethany let out a warm laugh and her lips slid into a smirk, eyes sparkling. "That is an understatement." She wet her lower lip and tapped her nails against the bar. "We were voracious in our appetite for one another." Darian had been the only person able to keep up with her in that area and she hadn't minded surrendering power on occasion. Big thing for Bethany Richards. "And I like to think we were good for one another. It was never planned, you and I."
She turned her head to check the staff was still doing as it was supposed to before returning her attention to Darian. "Instant chemistry that wound up being something more. A whole lot more." She'd been loyal to him, hadn't cheated, not once. Again, a very big thing for her.
"And I... enjoyed it," he said, chin lowering to his chest. Darian waited for the light bulb to come on. He couldn't imagine being allowed that kind of dalliance, not with the depth and breadth of Iain's control over him. Any moment when Darian wasn't making deals was a moment Iain wasn't ripping power and immortality off the demon's work. That meant that where Bethany came from, Iain was either dead or out of the picture, and Darian had outlasted him. Interesting.
Normally, humans didn't arouse Darian. He tried to see himself alongside a woman who fucked and killed for pleasure, which meant that he did, too. An activity separate from his business, a secondary element of his life. What was the catalyst? Why did he consider Bethany a cut above the rest? He drank his bourbon and turned those questions in his mind. Roxanne, his wayward client, was suddenly far away and the ache in his leg just a nuisance.
Over the rim of his glass, he stared at her, not as he might study a sculpture, but as a man looked at a potential mate. The sharp fingernails, the tongue that wet her bottom lip, the lithe figure. How would she feel around him? Darian shifted on his stool. "You are beautiful," he said.
"I like to think you did," Bethany remarked with a slow smile. The tips of her fingers traced the marks in the bar, following them until she stopped on one in particular, a twisted knot that said more about the wood it was made from. This one she tapped with the very edge of her index finger. She was a Slayer, not entirely human, but as close to it as she could come, given that she lacked the necessary feelings to have a soul.
When he told her that she was beautiful her lips curved again, darkening the hue of her eyes. "And we looked good together." Feeling bold she reached out to pull on that tie, tugging the knot slightly away until it sat at an awkward angle. "Now that," Bethany tugged on the tie for good measure. "Is much better."
Darian's left eyebrow went up. He looked down at the mess she'd made, then back up to Bethany's face. His fingers went to the tie knot and lingered there. "Am I also slovenly where you're from?" he asked. His mouth quirked the smallest amount. Not fixing it was troublesome; it practically made his eye tick.
He had an urge to pay it back and searched the blonde for a comparable insult. He thought about women, how much time went into hair and make-up. Coming off his stool, he reached out like he intended to grab her. Darian put his knuckle underneath her chin. His thumb stretched up and touched her lips, then smeared the lipstick off her mouth. He looked unmistakably triumphant.
Bethany's eyebrow twitched. "You know, it's so much more fun smearing lipstick with a kiss." She tilted her head, catching the tip of his thumb with her teeth, before letting go and just lifting her shoulders. "Slovenly? You? Never. You were never slovenly. Far from it in face, you just appreciated the certain element of chaos I brought into your life."
She smirked. "If you were a bottle I'd be the thing that popped your cork." She ran her thumb through the smudge of lipstick and smeared the trace of it over the edge of his glass.
Was that what it was? That tight, hot feeling in his gut when she bit his finger? A cork that needed to be popped? Darian's eyes were glassy when he picked up his bourbon and drank it out of what was, for all intents and purposes, a dirty glass. An indiscretion. As he set down it down with an accidentally loud clank, he felt his demon start to stretch and growl within its human-shaped confines, the way it did when a client stole from him and there was nothing to do but track them down and hurt them, or when he caught a glimpse of genuine addict-being-sated rapture and was so disgusted, he could barely walk off. He had flashes of what he wanted to do. Lightning-quick movements that snapped a spine.
Perhaps there was more than one kind of demonic howl.
"You unleashed me while I held you down," he surmised. "Though apparently, I didn't make the knots tight enough. It's a problem I don't recall ever having before."
Bethany shot him a devilish smile and hitched a shoulder up towards her shoulder as her expression sobered a moment later. "I don't know how I came to be here, it wasn't my choice." She leaned forward again, resting a few millimeters away from his personal space. "And here you are, all laced up, but I can see the same need for freedom in you as I did the Darian in my universe.
"Sometimes all it takes is the smallest push."
Freedom. What a concept. What would he do if he could do anything? Before this conversation, Darian hadn't a clue it was possible to keep existing without Iain playing puppet master with his strings. It opened a world of possibility, one that would need his full concentration to consider, and he was unable to extract his attention from the blonde to do it.
Darian gave her a skeptical look. "Are you going to push me, Bethany?" Curious, he let himself touch her hair, running his fingers slowly from roots to tips. It was silky. He felt the urge to tug it, but he wasn't sure if it was a vestigial urge, since the only time he'd held a woman's hair before was to yank it all out. Afterwards, he had watched it sift to the ground piece by piece.
"If you pushed me, what would it do for you?"
"Chaos," Bethany began. "Is my natural state of being. It is who I am. This place, it's so..." She struggled for the right word, closing her eyes at the sensation of his fingers in her hair. "Constant, unchanging, unfaltering." Her eyes opened and there was a darker look to them than there had been before. "Pushing you would push this place over, turn it inside out, turn me inside out. It would be one hell of a ride, for you and me. Can you imagine it?" She was a woman who needed to be challenged, needed conflict and all things dark.
She ran her hand over that tie of his and tugged on it.
No, he couldn't, not with his limited scope of imagination. But he wanted to. He was too fascinated by the knowledge of this other him to not want to explore it, whatever consequences might await. Also, he couldn't stop flashing to those images in Bethany's memory of their bodies interlocked and tiny, silver daggers ripping open veins. Could he get more than a glimpse of that release his clients got?
"Show me." Darian put his palm against her cheek. His thumb pushed against the corner of her mouth, the smallest finger against her throat. "Not in your head. Out here. Or tell me what you want done." Whatever it was, he would do it, no matter how bizarre or extreme it might seem.
Bethany's lips curled into a slow predatory smile as she leaned into that grip of his, flicking her eyes in the direction of the useless barmaid that had been annoying Bethany for the last four weeks.
"Take her outside, use this..." She reached down and palmed a sharp knife, passing it across the bar to Darian. "Bleed her dry. See what it's like to be truly free of everything."
She turned her head at this point. "Danielle, can you get this man another drink?"
Darian sat back. He was quick to palm the knife, which disappeared somewhere in the realm of his hand and his sleeve. Kill her? His eyes searched out the brunette. He had done such things before, though always in the line of his responsibilities and never for the simple pleasure of the act. Would he do it now, for Bethany, a stranger to him? He was acutely aware that murder was a bell that could not be un-rung, and a habit that formed quickly. It would also enrage Iain. Anything not done in his service was a transgression. But it had a certain pull to it, which he supposed was his inner demon clawing at the human guise that encased it. Why not let it out and investigate the result?
He crooked his finger at Danielle and waited until she was standing before him, hip jutting out in annoyance.
Darian leaned across the bar. "I wanted to offer you an apology," he said. "I was rude and you're beautiful. May I have another bourbon?" He took out a money clip and passed a twenty into her hand, despite having begun a bar tab. After a moment's hesitation, Danielle took the cash and poured him a drink. He turned on his charm and hooked her into conversation when she returned, a simple feat of asking her questions about herself and letting her answer in excess. He took his time about things, ordering two additional drinks and letting her divulge a disturbing amount of personal data before he offered a bold suggestion of meeting her outside when she had a break. "I just want a few moments alone," he said, "Without your boss breathing down our necks." He tossed a look at Bethany.
That was the comment that hooked Danielle.
Darian paid his tab and went outside. He waited by the employee exit. When Danielle eased out the door, he didn't bother with a seductive scene. He twisted her slender arms behind her back, covered her mouth, and used his body to propel her behind the building. The brunette's feet scraped and slipped on the broken concrete. This is no different than ordinary, he told himself, trying to ease the unfamiliar, fast thump of his heart. Bethany has become a client. I deliver what she needs.
Behind the building, he checked for onlookers, then steered the woman around a dumpster. "If I tell you to be still, I know you won't," he said, pressing her nose and forehead against the rough building. "But I can't help thinking this would be easier if you cooperated." Darian couldn't let go of her mouth. She would scream and bite his fingers. In order to get the knife, he would have to let go of the pretzel he'd made of Danielle's arms. Well, that clearly wouldn't work either. Stun her.
He let go for just long enough to grab her hair. He yanked her head backwards and drove it into the wall. Danielle's legs caved. He let her collapse onto her knees and got out the knife.
This will be messy, he thought. Strangulation would be better. He could easily dump her body elsewhere without all the blood, but that wasn't what Bethany requested, and he had an intuition that the mess was half the challenge of it. Darian opened the knife and bent over the brunette, his arm going around her throat. He felt a trickle of sweat dribbling down his ribcage and Iain flashed through his head. "You really are beautiful." He stuck the blade into her neck and ripped it across.
Darian let go and stepped back. He watched her fall down, twitching, while the puddle spread underneath. There was blood on his sleeve. He breathed hard and felt the lopsidedness of the act weighing on him, not like guilt but a near-obsessive-compulsive sense of evens and odds set askew. He had done something out of order and it made his insides itch. His head darted left and right, looking for an audience.
And quite an audience he had in the form of one Bethany Richards, eyes bright and cold smile on her face.
The hand resting on the wall curled inwards until the very tips were dragging over brick and mortar as she stepped closer, heels clicking with every step she took. "See, didn't that feel good?" She purred, voice dipping into the lower tones, ones that spoke of malevolence and cruelty. "A little violence makes the world go round." It was all but sung as Bethany continued her approach, pausing only to lift her step over the now prone figure of her once living employee.
She paused beside Darian, tipped her head and found the blood. "Tell me you didn't enjoy that."
"I don't..." Darian squinted in the darkness and shook his head, then pushed two fingers against his closed eyelids. His pulse was up. He felt himself sweating. Instead of being sickened by the scent of blood, he kept breathing in deep. Was that enjoyment or a simple adrenaline rush? The woman on the street would be dead before long and as he stepped back, he heard the wet sound of his shoe on the pavement. There was power in what he'd done.
Most demons were like wild animals; they killed in response to hunger or fear. Few species had the intelligence to form murderous plans or the drive to simply do it. Yet Bethany, a human, had it in spades. As he opened his eyes and searched her face, he found no evidence that what he'd done bothered her.
"You aren't ordinary," he said. When he raised his arm to scratch his cheek, he saw the knife still in his hand. The blood on it reminded Darian how easily he followed her suggestion. "History is full of stories of women like you. Women who tempt." He closed the knife, tugged on the pocket of Bethany's pants, and stuck the blade inside. He got a glimpse of her white hip bone. Women who tempt.
He took a tentative step back, then a second, more firm one. Bethany was a danger to his way of existing. He knew it in his bones. He rubbed a hand over the thin line of his mouth and tasted blood. What was he to do, leave the body and the blonde to either explain its presence or get rid of it? Attempt to smuggle it to safety himself? The former, he decided. The murder of an employee had been Bethany's idea and it would become her mess to clean up, provided she didn't point the police in Darian's direction. But he could slip them easily.
He turned his back on the scene and began to walk, speed picking up despite the flashes of pain in his leg. The question in his mind was how long it would take him to put the blonde out of his mind, if he could manage it at all.