Demon Seed by Jianne Carlo Read Free Book Online Page A

term dazzling smile . He’d heard that for those of native South American descent, a gold tooth was a prized status symbol.
    “What’s wrong?”
    Demon’s team members ribbed him about his poker face constantly. How the hell had Jacinta cottoned on to the fact that something had gone pissy?
    “Why do you think something’s wrong?” Demon took the seat opposite Jacinta.
    “Your eyes have less green in them.” She fiddled with her wineglass. “Like they do after you kiss me.”
    She was too young for him. Too pure, too sweet, too innocent, every single too under the goddamned sun. And what he had to tell her would sully all that and then some. Demon gritted his teeth. “We need to leave here right now.”
    “I understand. We must be speedier Gonzales.” She wiped the corner of her mouth, folded the white napkin into a perfect square, and set the linen to the side of her plate.
    “Speedy Gonzales.” He marveled that she didn’t utter a protest, ask a single question, and almost wanted her to be ornery and argue. Not that they had a second to spare. “We’ll go through the back door. This way.”
    Both Lucia and Fredo had disappeared. Demon and Jacinta slipped unnoticed into the unlit, narrow dirt alleyway that bordered a host of back entrances to various nightspots. He took a circuitous route to Fredo’s home a mile down from the river town.
    Humanity’s stamp receded with each bend of the Orinoco, the smells, sounds, and lights of civilization erased by the stark blackness of the jungle night. The wrinkle-nose aroma of cow manure grew more pungent as they approached the two-story wooden structure that listed to the right.
    “Cat got your tongue?” Demon didn’t know why her silence irritated him.
    “I have never heard that.” She touched his arm. “How does a cat get my tongue?”
    The most dangerous, vicious criminals on the continent had marked them for death, and she wanted to know where a phrase came from. Demon wanted to shake her placidity into next week. “Fuck if I know.”
    She stumbled. Demon clamped his lips together. He never swore in front of women and children. Never. Demon choked back a string of the foulest words and hauled her into his arms. “I’m not sure anyone knows where that phrase comes from. It could’ve originated in the Middle East, where liars have their tongues cut out and fed to cats.”
    “That’s awful.” Jacinta drew back. Though the quarter moon didn’t shed much in the way of beams, Demon could discern her creased forehead. “Does not everyone lie a little every day? I often worried about that in confession. I often told Sister Concilli how lovely she looked because it cheered her up so much. But she had no front teeth and never really did look lovely. Is it a lie to stretch the truth if it makes someone feel better? And to lose a tongue for that?”
    Her question sucker punched a hole in the walls barricading his heart. He felt unclean, unworthy, too tarnished by the filth of war and tango kills to ever deserve someone so shining clean. Demon fought to control the rampaging emotions battering his iron control. “That’s why those kinds of lies are called white lies. Everyone tells them. I do. I figure any god that punishes someone for white lies isn’t a just god. And I’m pretty sure they don’t cut off tongues anymore.”
    “I believe that you are now telling me a white lie to make me feel better, no?” She set her tiny palms around his jaw. “You are such a kind, honorable man. A true warrior and knight.”
    Heat suffused his throat and face. Demon hadn’t a blasted clue how to respond. One hand would be too much to count the number of times anyone had ever applied a single one of those words to him.
    “I have not thanked you properly for all that you have done for me. I thank you from my heart’s bottom.”
    Demon choked back the automatic correction to her idiom. “Not necessary, Jacinta. We need to get going. We’ll be traveling on our own