Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) - By Killian McRae Page 0,63

that bitch when you got her into bed. I didn’t count on you actually falling for her. But then, when you failed at getting her to murder an innocent, I saw I had to take matters into my own hands.”

Like he’d been punched in the stomach, Jerry doubled over, feeling himself dragging backward. Back, back into the prison cell, as his feet squished down into a molten floor before it hardened over, trapping him once more.

“You keep your fucking hooves off her!” he found himself bellowing. The rusty bars in his hand echoed with his shaking rattle that he forced unto them. “She’s never going to fall for whatever you’re planning. She’ll see it coming.”

The fake Riona’s finger reached through the bars and trailed a soft finger down Jerry’s nose and over his lips. “I don’t have to trick her at all, Jerry. Turns out, your precious, little Pure Soul has fallen for someone whose sins are much more easily coaxed. A man is born inches from sin. I’m pretty sure, if Riona’s given the choice between going with me of her own accord or taking his place in Hell, I’ll have a new prize on my mantel by tonight. And given that you suffer from that same lover’s delusion that he does, I’m sure my little disguise here will be just the recipe for getting the good father to give ‘Riona’ a good shag. Oh, they’ve made it too easy. If I had known they’d fall for each other, I wouldn’t have had to waste so much time topside with my little ploys.”

With a lunge forward, the imposter pulled Jerry hard against the bars and brought her lips down over his. Jerry struggled to keep his mouth closed, not to participate, but the devil’s forked tongue proved too strong. With a wave of nausea, he felt it force itself past his lips, into his mouth, and down into his throat, leaving a burning trail of acid. Jerry’s eyes sewed shut in disgust, until a few moments later her scent, a mixture of sulfur and jasmine, grew distant.

The imposter’s attention was turned back to a little, black box in her hand, and he heard her perfectly mimicked voice read out a text she was typing into the phone. Damn the devil for his heavy stock holdings in AT&T, and providing full bars in the farthest reaches of the underworld!

“MARC: MUST SPEAK TO YOU IN PRIVATE. PLEASE STOP BY MY PLACE AROUND 9-R,” she said in time and measure with her squirreling.

Suddenly, the whole devious plan played out in Jerry’s mind like it was something he came up with himself. If that priest felt for Riona one-fifth what he did, and unless Riona had managed to lose her alluring figure in the space of the last several days… “Fuck.”

The imposter’s eyes looked up at him teasingly. “And… SEND. Well, Jer-Bear, time for Daddy to go to work. You take care of yourself, ‘kay?”

With a flash of red light, Lucifer was gone.

Jerry’s hands wrapped around the iron bars and shook them like an enraged circus chimp. He had to find a way to get the heck out of Hell and to Riona in time. If he didn’t, she’d soon become the newest black diamond in Lucifer’s crown.

Fuck.

This whole thing was his fault. If only he’d refused to go along with Satan’s plan to do in the new Pure Soul before she was even aware of her powers. If only he’d warned Riona back during the time when they were a couple and he had his first pangs of doubt about contributing to her corruption. If only he’d gotten more to the point when he borrowed that guy’s body a few days ago and done something to communicate the eminent danger that was closing in on her. Instead, he let himself get carried away with the way her long, red hair swirled in the breeze and the way her bottom lip quivered when she was nervous…

Or, damn it, if he just had embraced his inner demon and not fucking cared for her at all. What was the point? Jerry had his shot at humanity. He messed it up in grand style. A soul invites its own damnation by the deeds that it works. He lost his chance to be good. He lost his purity. What the hell should he care if Riona Dade was damned to Hell and given a penthouse suite on the highest level? A real demon would revel in the