Slacker Demons Omnibus

Jennifer Stevenson

Description

Five guys are living in a man-lair, all hot, all ex-gods, now all sex demons working for hell, all this close to getting fired because, although they're good at meeting women, they suck at the paperwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Book View Cafe
• Date de parution: 27 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611389197
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

IT’S RAINING MEN
a Slacker Demons novel
Jennifer Stevenson

www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Edition March 17, 2015 Revised edition August 11, 2020 ISBN: 978-1-61138-465-9 Copyright 2012 Jennifer Stevenson
For Rich, with love
Chapter One
Archie

Saturday night Chloe came into the bar about nine thirty, looking desperate. I poured her the usual. She didn’t glance around the room and scope the prospects, so I knew it would be a bartender-sympathy night. Luckily, most of the regulars had already arrived and fueled up.
Chloe nursed her drink. “Hey, Archie.” She looked pouty and far too young for all the make-up and the sophisticated black bangs over her eyes.
I poured myself some good Scotch. “Speak, angel face.”
She didn’t even look up. “I’ve been dumped. Again.” She tossed off her Bombay and Pernod and shoved the glass at me. Her eyes were still on her glass. “Reynolds texted me today.”
I put the next one in front of her. “So you’re getting trashed?”
“That’s life in the dumpster. Cheers.” Weepy eyes. Oh, heaven.
“He’s not worthy,” I said. “Detailed whining, please.”
“You’re always so sympathetic.” She twisted her pout into a smile. “All right. He’s a louse. Of course he’s a louse. They all are. I haven’t met a nice man in . . . oh. . . . ” She squinted.
“Just over a year.” I ought to know. “You met him here, during the Proof Poir promotion, demonstrating how to make Frothy Coladas. His name was. . . . ” I snapped my fingers. “Dexter.”
She toasted me. “Very good. Dexter.”
“Dexter of the awesome abs and the sweet temper.”
“And the wife in South Carolina.” She sighed again. “I haven’t met even a decent married man since Dexter.” I heard a sob come up in her throat. “Swear to God, Archie, it’s a conspiracy. Somebody decided to keep all the decent men away from me.”
She looked so miserable, I couldn’t think of anything amusing to distract her.
She started to sniffle.
A bad weight settled in my chest. My ears burned and my fingers twitched. I felt suddenly sweaty. Was it a heart attack? That’d be a joke after all these centuries.
Nope. The old ticker was still pounding away.
I watched her mouth droop, and the bad feeling tightened. What the—
It was . . . wait, wait . . . I was getting it.
I felt guilty.
Whoa.
How could I blame myself for Chloe’s bad taste in men?
How could I fix it?
Well, there was one surefire way.
So then I made a mistake. After two years, I made my move on Chloe. As usual when I make a move, I let my imagination and my sense of humor take over.
“Funny you should say that.”
She sniffled. I felt awful. Bless it, she was crying now. A big tear fell into her second Bombay and Pernod. My throat tightened.
“What?” she croaked.
I felt like ten kinds of a rat. I felt like a creep. I felt guilty.
Fuck that. I hadn’t spent twelve hundred years working for the Regional Office to suffer guilt.
So instead of exploiting her properly, as I’d put off doing these past two years, I got clever.
“You’re right. It is a conspiracy.”
She stared at me, her pretty mouth dropping open.
I said, “A conspiracy to keep all the decent men away from you. And every other woman in Ravenswood Manor. Twenty-square-block area. No nice men live here any more. No nice men work here. No nice men walk their dogs or drive through or take the El through or come to the gym or the restaurants or the vet. Certainly they don’t come to the bars.”
She gave a hacking laugh. “Not funny.”
“Not meant to be,” I said. It was really hard to meet her eyes. But for once in, sheesh, a long time, I felt hideously, painfully guilty.
I put my elbows on the bar. “All right, here’s the deal. Me and one of my roommates—did I mention I’m a sex demon in the second circle of hell?” I said, rushing my fence. “I’m a sex demon in the second circle of hell. We had this brilliant idea. Chase all the good men out of an entire neighborhood. Then clean up.” At her confused expression, I explained, “Lots more women for us. We would look good compared to the available mortal dickheads.”
She closed her mouth long enough to swallow. “Go on.”
“It took six months to set up, and then we ran it for a year. You should know how well it worked,” I added gruffly. I took a swallow of Scotch courage.
“And then?” She seemed a lot more cheerful.
I shrugged. “And then the Regional Office and the Home Office had their big five-year accounts reconciliation, and some programs got cut and some assets got moved, and long story short, we got caught in the machinery.”
Chloe squinted at me.
Now I got it. She wasn’t swallowing a word of this. Thanking hell, I spun the bullshit faster. “And now I’m on work release.”
She laughed delightedly. “Go on. This is fascinating.”
“I’m glad you’re amused,” I said grumpily. “I should have known, of course, that you were liable to get snared in our net, but I guess I’d hoped you would wise up, or at least take a breather from your lifestyle of dating sons of bitches.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She flapped a hand. “Moving right along.”
I shrugged. “So, yes, there’s a conspiracy, and it worked pretty well, but now it’s officially over.”
Her mouth twisted. “Tell that to Reynolds. The putz.”
“Reynolds is in the past.”
She was smiling. I felt a little better now. More like the idiot I really am than the total bastard I pretend to be.
So I spun some more. “The good news.”
“There’s good news?”
“Of course. The good news is, you’ve been selected for victims’ compensation.” Yeah, that sounded about right. The sort of thing those bureaucratic morons above and below would do. “As compensation for your suffering this past year, and in recognition of the damage to your peace of mind, for a limited time only.” I smiled my snakiest smile. “For you, it’s gonna start raining men.”
“You are so full of shit,” she said affectionately.
“I’m glad you’re glad. You have every right to be pissed off.”
“Are you—no. I’ll play along.” She’d started to laugh, then straightened her face. “This is the goofiest line I’ve ever heard you use. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use a line. You just raise your eyebrow and they go home with you.” She chuckled. “Yeah, that eyebrow.”
I said, “I’m not kidding.” I didn’t put on my I’m-not-kidding face. She’d seen it too often. I just waited out the chuckles.
“Go on,” she said. “Oh, is it my turn?” She stared at the pressed-tin ceiling tiles for a moment. “Okay. So you’re on work release for messing with my love life? And you’re in trouble with hell? Or heaven?”
“Both.”
“And you’re gonna make it rain nice men all over me?”
I nodded.
Build her confidence.
That was what I did with all of them. Built their confidence and then fucked them until they glowed in the dark. The glow lasted long enough to attract men from miles around, and the confidence gave them enough discrimination to pick and choose for once. Hell didn’t ask me to make them miserable. I was just supposed to make them. Making them happy was my little act of rebellion, otherwise boredom would have killed me a thousand years ago.
She nailed me. “So why are you telling me this?”
Good question. I couldn’t figure the angles fast enough, so I blurted out the truth. “Because you’re crying all over my bar again. It’s bad for the wood.”
She laughed some more. I felt much better. She recrossed her long legs. Two guys looked up at Chloe from their foosball table, and their mouths fell open.
We were off to a good start.
Then the men’s room door opened, and my roommate Lido walked out.
I frowned. How long had he been here?
“No, seriously, why are you admitting this?” She made “con me” eyes over the rim of her glass.
I talked fast. “I’m telling you all this principally to mess with my friend’s head. The other sex demon on the project. We’ve each got women assigned to us through victims’ compensation. So, to make life easier, we’re padding out each other’s lists.” I shrugged defensively. “Hey! It’s not easy to organize a rain of decent men.”
“So your friend will be, like, mixed in with these decent men you speak of. Like a bomb in a video game.” She rolled her eyes.
“Yes.” As Lido ambled toward us, I lowered my voice and leaned toward her, to draw her closer. “It should be pretty easy for you to spot him.”
“You can show me his mug shot.” She giggled and leaned toward me, too. “So I can give him a hard time.”
“Only if you want to.”
“So principally you’re telling me all this so I’ll mess him over. Your friend. This sex demon. This other sex demon.”
“Shh! Right.”
“And secondarily, why? Really? Seems to me it would all work more smoothly for you if you just left me in the dark.”
I looked at my drink, embarrassed. “If you must know, I wouldn’t exactly wish him on a nice girl. I suppose he’s cute. In dim lighting. But, well.” I shrugged. “I like you. I’d hate to see you fall for that asshole when better candidates are on the way.”
She threw her head back and roared. “I don’t believe this!” She crowed with glee. “You’re hitting on me!”
At which moment Lido stepped up and went “Tsk!” in her ear. The snaky Hungarian bastard. I wanted to bite his throat out and growl She’s mine! at his corpse.
In the same moment, I realized what a disaster it would be if I took Chloe to bed.
Chloe

So Archie finally wanted to take me to bed!
For two years, I’d been too chicken to try to date Archie. I’d watched him lift his eyebrow and walk out with too, too many girls.
I’d also felt miffed, off and on, that of all the regulars at Cheaters, I was the only one he hadn’t lifted that eyebrow to. He was one of those men who exuded. God, yes, he was a hunk.
But so far he’d only played big brother to me. Which was a pity.
Ignoring the truth, which was that my own terrible judgment about men had made me date jerk after jerk for years, I plunged into flirting with my best friend.
I frowned at him. “Considering you’re the one who chased all the nice ones away, I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you, at the hypocrisy of all your fine bartenderly s