bedeviled & beyond 07 - beset & bewildered by Sam Cheever Read Free Book Online Page A

shouldn’t have interfered, Darma.”
    God save me I found myself staring at his sexy mouth and forgot to respond.
    “You should have trusted me not to take it too far.”
    My gaze snapped up. “Trusted you? He played you like a fiddle. All he had to do was poke you once in a sensitive spot and you were ready to slice him into gargoyle snacks.” I shook my head and tried to step away...to gain myself some much needed perspective. “Trust needs to be earned, partner.”
    His sexy mouth tightened. The black flecks dancing in the golden pools of his gaze flared briefly and then he nodded, dropping his hand and stepping back. “You’re right, Darma. I overreacted.” He smiled and the tightness pooling heat between my legs flared outward, stealing my ability to breathe. “Thank you for saving me from myself.”
    I frowned at the quick change of mood. “Don’t mess with me, Slayer. I’m a woman on the edge here.”
    He chuckled huskily. “I’m not playing you. When you’re right, you’re right.”
    A final spark of something dark flared in his gaze and then died, leaving behind the normal cockiness I’d grown to know and love in my partner. Although it was sometimes really irritating. “You seem to enjoy annoying me,” I told him as I headed for the Sky Vamp.
    “God knows it’s so hard to do.”
    I narrowed my gaze. “That was a shot wasn’t it?”
    He gave me innocent face and I almost smiled. Slayer could be very charming when he wanted to be. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Princess.”
    I slammed a palm against the Vamp. “Stop calling me that!”
    He met my angry gaze across the top of the vehicle, something dark sliding back into his eyes. “Does it make you angry when someone calls you something you don’t like?”
    I blinked, pulled air into my lungs and then inclined my chin. “Point taken.”
    “Disengage locks and open,” he told the Vamp.
    As the doors glided silently upward I couldn’t help getting in the last word. “However, you’ll notice I didn’t try to kill you for it.”
    Silence beat between us for a moment and then he chuckled softly. “Touché, partner.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Hell Sucks
    Dragoyles, snapes and fiery pits,
    Yeah, this is gonna end well.
    Hell is...well...you can probably guess what the place is like. I’ve only been there a handful of times, helping Astra save the green dragons, helping Astra save Dialle, and as the unhappy prisoner of a seriously oversexed royal devil.
    Don’t ask me about that last thing. I don’t want to talk about it.
    But though I knew Hell to be an ugly, unpleasant place, I couldn’t help noticing its further degeneration since the last time we were there. Is it just me or does Hell look like...well like hell warmed over?
    Slayer chuckled. It has seen better days. Believe it or not. He frowned in my mind. If the situation here is a reflection of the situation on the mortal plane, that doesn’t speak well for humanity, does it?
    He’d read my mind. The interplanal correlation was a well-known phenomenon, going back to Biblical times. It had been written about in prophecy back when Jesus walked the earth. The health of one was supposed to be directly tied to the other. Maybe this is a reflection of Dialle the First being vanquished and has nothing to do with the other planes.
    Slayer shrugged. It’s possible, I guess. If we’ve learned anything over the last few years with Dialle and Astra, it’s that prophecy is malleable.
    He didn’t sound convinced. But you don’t believe it?
    I didn’t say that.
    The giant red dragon we were riding through Hell suddenly roared, fire emerging in a thick, ragged column from its muscular throat. Slayer responded with a few guttural squawks that I couldn’t understand. “What’s up?” I asked him.
    He turned his head, his profile worried. “We’re about to have company.” Slayer lifted a hand to signal to the other red. Gerch rode the huge male with confidence, his massive form