Demons Everywhere I Look E-Book

Mia Kingsley

• Herausgeber: Black Umbrella Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Of Monsters and Demons
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 90

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

I had a very specific target in mind. Eirene Jensen—a gorgeous and quite fearless redhead. Exactly my type. But by a stupid coincidence, I ambushed her friend Audrey instead, and by the time I realized my mistake, it was already too late. Now I have to decide what to do with Audrey. In my job, it's not exactly smart to leave the witnesses behind, and to be honest, Audrey really doesn't do it for me. She is just as attractive as Eirene, but much more scared and starts shaking every time I enter the room. However, I might have to change my mind about her, because the longer Audrey is in my power, the more her fear appeals to me...   Dark romance. Morally questionable themes. Explicit scenes and language. Standalone, but part of a duet with recurring characters.

Leseprobe

DEMONS EVERYWHERE I LOOK

OF MONSTERS AND DEMONS DUET 2

MIA KINGSLEY

A DARK ROMANCE

CONTENTS

Demons Everywhere I Look

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

About the Author

DEMONS EVERYWHERE I LOOK

I had a very specific target in mind. Eirene Jensen—a gorgeous and quite fearless redhead. Exactly my type.

But by a stupid coincidence, I ambushed her friend Audrey instead, and by the time I realized my mistake, it was already too late.

Now I have to decide what to do with Audrey. In my job, it’s not exactly smart to leave the witnesses behind, and to be honest, Audrey really doesn’t do it for me. She is just as attractive as Eirene, but much more scared and starts shaking every time I enter the room.

However, I might have to change my mind about her, because the longer Audrey is in my power, the more her fear appeals to me...

Dark romance. Morally questionable themes. Explicit scenes and language. Standalone, but part of a duet with recurring characters.

CHAPTER1

AUDREY

The line outside the deli stretched almost around the block and I stopped with a sigh because I didn’t feel like waiting in line. The chocolates were supposed to be a surprise for Eirene, but if I waited here now, I would be much too late for our date.

I was already late anyway, because I had to basically throw an older customer out of the store after closing time. Eirene didn’t know about the chocolates, and I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t a bad friend if I would just do without the gift and take the subway toward Dead Man’s Anchor.

When I turned around, I saw a man across the street in a black coat. He had his collar turned up and a gray plaid Burberry scarf wrapped around his neck—like Randy.

I stood there mesmerized for a moment, and only the angry honking of the SUV driver prevented me from stumbling right in front of him.

My pulse shot up; my throat became tight. The car drove on, and I just saw the man in the black coat disappear into the department store.

This time I kept an eye on the traffic as I hurried across the street. Finally. After all this time, I had found Randy again. I felt sick with anxiety. How many times had I thought of what I was going to say? Countless times—and now I still felt like I had swallowed my own tongue.

A delivery truck stopped right in front of the door to the huge store and I had to dodge the hatch that opened in the back. One of the delivery men climbed out of the passenger seat and almost stumbled into me. He grabbed my upper arms to steady me as the black-coated man disappeared through the revolving door.

I almost wrenched my neck so I could keep an eye on him.

“Sorry, lady.” The delivery man let his gaze wander over me.

“It’s okay.” I wanted to free myself from his grip. My pulse was racing by now and I felt erratic.

“Not so fast. Are you really all right? Or maybe you need a drink? Tonight? On me?” He smiled winningly at me, but I merely shook my head and practically rushed toward the door of the department store after escaping the man’s grasp.

“Fucking bitch!” he yelled after me. Whatever he said after that was swallowed up by the revolving door.

I looked around and spotted the black coat on the escalator going down. If I remembered correctly, the men’s department was in the basement.

Walking to the escalator was like overcoming an obstacle course. It was as if every other customer in the entire store was trying to run into my path.

The stairs themselves were so crowded that I couldn’t push past the other people. Again and again I crouched down, but I could no longer see the coat.

A sinking feeling spread through my stomach. I did a lap around the sales area, then a second. I got faster and faster until I was almost running. My heart was pounding and my heels were clicking loudly on the floor.

I was about to burst into tears when I saw the coat walking toward the changing rooms. With shaky knees, I followed him, and just as he was about to enter one of the cubicles, I grabbed his arm. “Randy, I⁠—”

The man turned around with a furrowed brow.

It wasn’t Randy.

I let go of him as if I had burned myself. “Excuse me.”

“No problem.” He just shrugged with a bored expression and went into the fitting room, closing the door with a final sound behind him.

I breathed out shakily and leaned against the wall. Sweat ran down my back. My nerves were completely shot. I couldn’t go on like this for much longer.

“I’m going to try these things on for a minute, okay?” said a man to my right.

“Da-da,” babbled the small child in the stroller, reaching out to the man.

“You do that. We’ll wait here.” The woman leaned over the stroller and stroked the child’s cheek. “We’re waiting here for Daddy, right?”

I lowered my head, because the first tears were now running down my cheeks after all, and I pushed past the happy couple. I barely held back my sobs as I hurried toward the exit.

The cold winter air brought little relief. I felt my cheeks burning with shame and my nose was certainly fiery red.

To make matters worse, my chase had taken much longer than I had thought, and now I was more than late.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks and hurried toward the subway stop. It wasn’t until I was on the train that I took my cosmetic mirror out of my handbag and checked my makeup. Miraculously, only a little mascara had settled in the corners of my eyes. The rest was intact, and contrary to my fears, I didn’t look at all like an anemic raccoon.

When the train stopped in a tunnel, I knew I had better let Eirene know so she wouldn’t worry. I rummaged in my bag for my phone and sighed in annoyance because, of course, I had no reception. It wasn’t until I took a second look that I noticed my battery indicator was glowing red.

Panic spread through me. No, no, no. It couldn’t be. I had charged the phone overnight after all. If it went out now, I wouldn’t be able to calm Eirene down or get a call. What was I to do if today was the day Randy contacted me again? New tears threatened to roll from my eyes. I had to pull myself together. Eirene probably wouldn’t worry so soon. She was usually late herself, and with any luck I would still be at the Dead Man’s Anchor before her.

Besides, I could ask that pushy bartender if maybe he had a charger for me so that the phone problem was quickly resolved. Or maybe Eirene could ask him in my place. I didn’t want to encourage the guy unnecessarily before he asked me out again.

When the train finally started moving again, I was about to have a nervous breakdown. I rushed across the sidewalk and immediately saw that Eirene wasn’t standing in front of the bar as agreed. It had probably gotten too cold for her and she had gone inside. By now I was almost twenty-five minutes late. For some people that probably wasn’t much, but I felt extremely guilty.

I pulled the door to the bar open and was relieved to find that at least for once it wasn’t Gabriel standing behind the bar, but his colleague, whose name I didn’t know because he wasn’t half as pushy as my persistent admirer.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t see my best friend anywhere. I should have probably just called her. But when I looked at my phone to dial her number, the display was dark.

Fortunately, her number was one of the very few I knew by heart. I went to the bar and smiled at the bartender. Now I was a little annoyed that I didn’t know his name.

“Hey, Audrey.” He nodded at me.

Damn. “Hey, can I maybe use your phone for a minute? My battery’s dead and my date’s not here.”

“Sure.” He scratched the back of his head, bent down a little, and searched around under the counter. “It’s here somewhere.”

With a rustling sound he pulled out an old-fashioned black telephone with a rotary dial. The layer of dust on it did not bode well. It was even less encouraging, however, when he held up the torn end of the cord. “Crap. I guess I’d better give you my cell.”

“That’s so nice. Thank you.” I took the smartphone from him and typed in Eirene’s number.

She didn’t answer.

Should I be worried?

I handed the phone back to the bartender and thought about what I should do now. Probably the smartest thing would be to wait a little longer for Eirene, right?

Another twenty minutes passed before I couldn’t take it anymore.

I left the bar, took the first cab I could find, and had it take me to my best friend’s apartment. What else could I do? There had to be a reason why Eirene hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering her phone.

I couldn’t see anything from the outside because the front windows were dark, but Eirene’s living room was on the other side of the building, so I didn’t know if she was home or not.

Since she didn’t respond to my ringing, I pulled my heavy set of keys out of my purse. I had a key to her apartment and would check to see if she was there. If she wasn’t, I would at least be able to charge my phone so I could call her again. My best friend might have been a little tardy, but she wasn’t unreliable and would have canceled our date if she was indisposed. Not hearing from her at all made me even more nervous than my own phone being dead.

I had a nauseous feeling in my stomach when I unlocked Eirene’s apartment. The uneasiness increased abruptly, because it didn’t smell like vanilla as usual. Instead, I got a whiff of a fresh, but clearly...male scent.

With trembling fingers, I groped for the switch and the hallway light came on. I almost screamed when I saw the man casually leaning against the wall with his arms folded as he smiled at me.

“Hello, Eirene.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m not Eirene.”

He tilted his head. “Really? You want to start role-playing right away?”

“I’m truly not Eirene. My name is Audrey.”

“Whatever. And I’m not the guy you’ve been teasing a little too much with your sexual fantasies these last few months.”

My stomach cramped because I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. All I knew was that my best friend had fallen off the face of the earth while a stranger was in her apartment.

An extremely attractive man with a tad too long black hair, an equally black beard that was already streaked with a little gray, and brown eyes, who wore a well-fitting suit—but also a stranger who did not seem as if he had good intentions.