Priest (Trident Agency #2)

1. Priest

1

PRIEST

T he door slammed shut behind Priest, but he barely heard it. He was caught up in the vicious cycle of his never-ending hunger. It was something he’d learned to live with. The insatiable cravings that came with who—and what—he was. He wasn’t like Knight. He’d never known what it was like to exist as a human.

He wasn’t even good at playing pretend the way Jeremiah could when he needed to blend in.

Of course, his nature—being an Incubus Demon, which made him a pariah in the supernatural world—was the first thing that had bonded him and Jeremiah. It was the reason the rest of the team trusted him with their lives. He understood what it meant to exist outside of the polite, pandering social norms. To live with a strength that also made him a complete outsider.

But gods, he was so tired of being hungry .

And he was so tired of never being satisfied every time he attempted to take his fill.

He appreciated Azriel’s club, of course. A den of iniquity, as the Angel liked to call it, and the perfect feeding grounds for lonely Incubi who needed a quick fix. Not that Priest knew many like him. They were one of the rarest beings walking the planet, and it was one of the reasons he wasn’t killed on the spot when he and Jeremiah had been picked up as children.

He was valuable. Powerful in ways even he didn’t fully understand and susceptible to coercion when he was too young to know better.

He’d lucked out growing up with Jeremiah instead of being captured and molded by some foreign power that would use him for their own gain.

And really, luck was the only word for it. He should have been like the others: sold into the service of some royal family, brainwashed into thinking he was serving his own best interests as he destroyed the people he was meant to be protecting.

Instead, he became one of the founding members and the second-in-command of the Trident Agency, working his ass off for a lot of money and a fraction of begrudging respect from the people they served.

It wasn’t the worst life, but it wasn’t the best.

And life felt a little odd and a little lonely now that he was witnessing Jeremiah slowly but surely tumble into love with a Siren prince. He was happy for his best friend, but a small piece of him was terrified that the moment Jeremiah and the prince realized how good they were for each other, he’d abandon everything he and the other agents had built.

After all, the world the Tridents inhabited had no place for a royal prince groomed to rule a kingdom, even if he was abdicating his throne. So what would Jeremiah’s options be except to leave the agency behind?

Priest was steadfastly keeping that to himself, of course. He wasn’t about to cause an upset in the office dynamic before shit actually hit the fan. He told himself that maybe Jeremiah and the prince needed to scratch an itch, and it would all fizzle out once they took care of the threat against the royal family, and things could go back to normal.

But he also saw the way Remi made Jeremiah smile. The way he made the stoic, loveless Hellhound soften in ways no one ever had before.

Jeremiah’s heart was doomed, and all Priest could do was hope that didn’t mean the end of who and what they were to each other.

Taking a breath before stepping into the main club, Priest felt the last vestiges of his feed settle under his skin. If he didn’t know better, he’d say the effects weren’t lasting as long as they once had, and it was starting to scare him. Priest grew up with horror stories about Incubi like him, who could never find a steady partner. The unsatiated hunger drove them to irreversible insanity, and if that happened… his friends would have to take him out. There was no cure for that kind of madness in Demons like him.

There were no other options, and while he knew he had a while longer to spare, the walls felt like they were closing in on him.

Death was an inevitability, but he hoped he had a couple of centuries to live before it came to being put down like a rabid animal.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Priest nudged the swinging door open with his shoulder to avoid whatever sticky, glittery shit was always all over the furniture and made his way past the stage, where a couple of Siren go-go dancers were entertaining a group in the front seats. Other dancers—he spotted another Siren, two Felidae shifters, and a redheaded Dragon with an impressive bulge in his thong that Priest had fed off a few times—were perched in laps, grinding against whatever patron had the biggest wad of cash that evening.

There were a handful of demons and a Hellhound monitoring the main room and watching the feeds from the “private” spaces.

Azriel might be a giant asshole most days, but he made sure his dancers were well protected, even if he wasn’t there himself. Few things could get past an Angel, fallen or not.

Priest could smell sex, and it settled under his skin, tantalizing and almost cruel because he couldn’t have it the way he wanted it. He’d learned when he was young that to truly satisfy his hunger, he’d have to drain a partner dry, killing them in the process. He fed on arousal and lust, but when he took from someone, it wasn’t just their pheromones he ingested. If left unchecked, he could turn their organs into dust, saturating himself with the very essence that made a person who they were.

He’d almost done it as a teen, when he’d had so little control over his Demon he could barely be trusted to go a store without supervision. Knight had pulled him from the brink when that happened, and he knew he couldn’t go there again. And yet… he kept torturing himself by hanging out at the Pearly Gates whenever he was in town. Meals were easy for him to get. It wasn’t like he needed to go to a strip club to feed.

He had no idea why he kept doing this to himself.

Well, okay. That was a lie, but it wasn’t one he wanted to admit aloud just yet. If he let himself think about the shop next door and the human who was almost always behind the front desk, he would start to spiral. And when he started to spiral, he got hungry.

And when he got hungry…

He got reckless.

“Well, well, well. Look what the… hmm, who dragged you in here today? Was it an awkwardly adorable human who runs a shop across the street?”

The voice accompanied a cloud of smoke that was most definitely not tobacco. It was something foreign and spicy, like it came from one of the Dragon kingdoms. Azriel leaned over the bar and smiled at Priest. He looked the way he always did: pale and muscular, like he was cut from ancient marble. His messy, blond hair hung over his forehead, just a little too long, though it gave him an innocent boyish look, which was immediately ruined by the blunt clenched between his teeth.

He was shirtless, like always, wearing impossibly tight jeans and ice-blue glittery eyeshadow that made him look doe-eyed and na?ve. Not that anyone who spent more than five minutes with Azriel would believe that, but it was one of the reasons people had believed Angels were kind and loving for so many generations after they began to fall and live amongst earthbound society.

“I need a drink,” Priest said, ignoring his friend’s words. He did not need to be given shit tonight about the human. Even if Azriel was mostly right.

Azriel rolled his eyes, but he reached under the bar and came up with a moderately clean highball glass and used his hands to throw in a few cubes of ice. Priest stared him dead in the face as Azriel lifted the whiskey bottle and filled the cup halfway.

“Want to start a tab?” the Angel asked.

Priest scoffed. “I’m not paying for your shitty liquor.” He snatched the glass and took a long sip. It tasted like piss, but he choked it down for the sake of it. He had no ability to get drunk, but Gargoyle liquor did dull his senses, and today, he needed it.

“How’s the whole”—Azriel wiggled ring-covered fingers at him—“hero thing going?”

His shoulders tensed, and Priest knew what was coming. The Angel leapt, and though his wings weren’t visible at the moment, the rush of wind battered Priest as they helped to lift Azriel into the air so he could land on top of the bar with his legs neatly crossed.

Priest focused on Azriel’s knee, which was showing through a rip in his jeans. There was a dark curl of ink on his skin, and even over the scent of arousal and sweat, he could catch hints that the tattoo was fresh, which meant a touch of something so alluring his mouth watered: Angel blood.

He fought the urge to press his finger against the tattoo to see if it would hurt his friend.

“Same as it was last week,” he finally answered. “Jeremiah’s barely able to tear his focus from the prince, Knight’s quietly having a panic attack that something bigger’s going on, Slate’s still off on his super-secret assignment, and Storm’s grumpy because he had to visit his brother’s Hoard.”

And Priest was left in the city, trying to hold all the pieces together.

Azriel hummed softly as he stretched his legs out and let his knees press on either side of Priest’s biceps. The Angel leaned back on his elbows, tipping his head toward the ceiling. There were two bodies suspended above them, but Priest wasn’t going to look. By the waves of lust he was getting, he didn’t need to in order to know what was going on.

The horndog that he was, Azriel licked his lips, his pupils dilating and dick hardening twelve inches from Priest’s face. He refused to move back, knowing the Angel wasn’t really coming on to him. He just got bored and liked to push to see if he could get Priest to crack sometimes.

There was a surge of Angelic power, and a high-pitched, feminine voice cried out, practically showering Priest in pheromones as she orgasmed for a long minute, a masculine grunting growing louder and getting faster.

Priest couldn’t even imagine how much the couple had paid to get played with like this by the dirty fallen Angel who ran the place.

As if nothing had happened, Azriel focused his softly glowing eyes on Priest and tilted his head to the side. “Whose side are you on?”

“Knight’s,” Priest answered without thinking.

Fucking Angels, always loosening his tongue. They were the only Supes who had the ability to enthrall him, and his only saving grace was that Azriel was one of his best friends and never did it to hurt him.

“He’s paranoid after all the shit he went through, but I think he’s onto something.” He glared right at his gorgeous face. “Also fucking stop that.”

Azriel blinked, and his soft grip on Priest’s brain released. He shot him a wide, unapologetic smile as he snatched his drink out of his hand and swallowed down half.

Setting the glass on the bar, he scooted closer to the edge and touched the underside of Priest’s jaw with one finger. “You’re still hungry.”

“I’m always hungry,” Priest muttered. And he meant it. Right now, it was just a quiet itch. His sessions here at the club kept him functional but never satisfied. No one who frequented the club was strong enough to keep him properly fed for more than a few meals at most.

“You could always book me.” Azriel gave him a shit-eating grin, running his straight white teeth over his bottom lip.

Except maybe the Angel, but that was a bad idea.

“I’d probably kill us both. And half the city.”

“Yeah, but what a ride, right?” Azriel shivered and winked—like the idea of their mutually assured destruction was something he found positively delicious—then swung a foot up and pressed his bare toes with black polish into the center of Priest’s chest. “Time to go, my little sex Demon.”

Priest blinked at him. “Excuse you?”

“You’re sitting here wasting time when we both know you want to be next door flirting with your adorable bespectacled human. Your woe-is-me attitude is bringing the whole place down.”

Priest fought back a sigh at his friend’s mercurial temperament. It wasn’t really Azriel’s fault. He was an unmoored, unbonded Angel with no interest in finding his fated mate, so he couldn’t always control the swings in his mood or how his attention would hop around. It was what made him and his club so popular though.

Priest stared up at him, trying to picture him the way the myths of Angels existed in human society. White robes. Feathered wings. A glowing halo. The lie of kindness in their eyes.

He bit back a snort.

Azriel took a long drag of his spice blunt and blew the smoke into Priest’s face, making his head spin for a second. Fuck, whatever was in that thing was strong as shit. “Seriously. Your pining is getting on my nerves.”

Priest tossed back the last of his drink and stood without really thinking. He wanted to blame Azriel’s thrall for that, but deep down, he knew the truth. He’d met the human from next door—Oliver—several months ago when he’d stumbled into Azriel’s bar looking frazzled and panicked.

For a moment, Priest had thought the human was going to be torn to shreds. Historically, humans weren’t welcome in places like Azriel’s. It was meant to be a safe space for Supes, and humans had a long history of being anything but safe.

Only, it hadn’t happened that way.

Azriel’s face had gone uncharacteristically soft. He’d hopped over the bar and taken Oliver by the shoulders, pulling him into a dark corner and talking to him in a tone so soft not even Priest had been able to make out the words. Priest had watched as all the tension drained from Oliver’s face.

It wasn’t long before Oliver was sitting two stools away from Priest, sipping an odd-looking drink—honest-to-gods glitter swirling around blue liquid. He smiled shyly at Priest, and while he wanted desperately to deny it, he couldn’t hide the fact that something deep inside him felt like it was waking up. It was a slow, cautious burning—like the lust he fed on, only… different.

It terrified him and created an obsession that he couldn’t run from.

And there was no trying to pretend like he didn’t come up with the most clumsy and ridiculous excuses to see Oliver every time he came in to feed. It was easier if Oliver was in the club having a drink, but those moments were actually rare, so instead, Priest invented reasons to be in a little human shop to torment himself.

Azriel had been merciless in his teasing since he realized how Priest felt, but he also didn’t understand why Priest wouldn’t actually pursue him, and Priest couldn’t make an Angel understand why he’d never cross that line. Azriel had far more control over his powers than Priest did, and his powers weren’t meant to consume and destroy.

Priest wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let himself get close and Oliver suffered. Some Incubi loved feeding on humans. They loved the rush of being able to drain them. Humans were so responsive, after all. They were bound by their emotions with so little control, and it was a heady rush. But Priest had only sampled that once in his life, long before he dedicated himself to protecting others, and he vowed never again.

It was far too addictive. Far too dangerous.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Priest muttered.

Azriel rolled his eyes and kicked his leg, sending Priest flying. Luckily, he’d been expecting it, so he landed on his feet, only slightly rumpled. He stood, straightening his shirt as he glowered at the smirking Angel and walked back up to the bar.

“This is for your own good,” Azriel said with a shrug, swinging his legs like nothing had happened. He reached behind him again and came up with a stack of mail, slapping it against Priest’s chest. “Here. I got some mail delivered here for him. Now you have an actual reason to go in there besides stalking him.”

“I’m not stalking him. And unless you want to pay me, I’m not your goddamn errand boy,” Priest growled.

Azriel laughed and flicked the end of his nose, and Priest flinched away. “Keep telling yourself that, gorgeous.”

“I’m going home.”

Azriel stared at the pieces of mail Priest was still holding close to his chest. “Sure you are, bud. Whatever helps you sleep at night—though there’s a pretty little thing next door who could probably do wonders for your insomnia.” He motioned at his mouth with a closed fist, his tongue poking at his cheek.

Priest let his eyes flare black for a second, showing his Demon. “Don’t talk about him like that. I will end you.”

Azriel just winked, then turned his attention to the Siren who’d wandered up to sit at the bar and stare, mouth gaping at the couple still caught in their Angel-induced haze of ecstasy. “Hey, gorgeous. First time at the Pearly Gates?”

Priest knew a dismissal when he saw one.

Squaring his shoulders, he turned, ignoring several stares from the dancers as he made his way toward the exit. The night air was a little too cool on his skin, in spite of the fact that the Siren kingdom was one of the warmer, more humid climates. He shivered and did his best not to glance to the left as he waited for a lull in traffic.

He stared down at the mail in his hands. Most of it looked like pointless junk. He could probably throw it all away, and Oliver wouldn’t miss it.

“Just go,” he muttered to himself. “Slip it through the mail slot and walk away.”

His feet were already moving, his hand reaching for the door handle, and his resolve shattered.

Looking around the empty shop, Priest thought maybe he was going to be unlucky. Then the back door swung open, and his heart gave a single, heavy thud. But it wasn’t the man he was there to see. It was Oliver’s best friend and business partner.

Poe was also good-looking, but he was rugged and sharp where Oliver was delicate and soft. He was just as kind, though, and just as protective of supernaturals as Oliver seemed to be, so Priest had no choice but to like him a little.

“I’m just here to?—”

“I’ll let Oliver know you’re here. He’s in the back digging around some antique boxes,” Poe interrupted.

“I just—” Priest tried again, but Poe was gone.

His shoulders sagged, and he hurried toward the counter, determined to just leave the mail and go this time, but before he could turn away, the door opened once more, and Oliver was there. Priest’s heart stuttered in his chest, his throat going tight. He had never and would never understand his reaction to this single human. There was no sense behind it.

Oliver was short and lithe—the body of a kid who had probably once been malnourished. He was gorgeous, with light brown hair that was prone to waves and hazel eyes behind black-rimmed glasses full of happiness and mischief. He was everything Priest wasn’t. He was kind. He was gentle. He wore sweater vests, and his hair was always mussed like he’d just rolled out of bed.

Priest was helplessly and hopelessly charmed by him, and he didn’t understand why or how.

The only thing he knew was that he never wanted to stop being in his presence. Even if it was slowly killing him.

“Your… uh… mail,” he said, gesturing weakly.

Oliver glanced down, and then his mouth spread in a wide grin. He adjusted his glasses, then walked over and picked up the envelopes. His perfect, delicate fingers flicked through all of it, and then—as Priest predicted he would—he tossed it all into the trash.

“Did Azriel send you?”

Priest rolled his eyes. “How’d you guess?”

Oliver laughed, the sound of it almost melodic, and Priest’s heart sped up a bit when he leaned his forearms on the counter, his eyes soft and crinkled in the corners. “He’s such a lazy asshole. You should start charging him for running his errands.”

“That’s what I told him,” Priest said. He leaned against the counter and stared down. They were inches apart, and the world seemed to narrow down until only the two of them existed. “He just laughed in my face and started flirting with a Siren at the bar.”

Oliver’s smile softened, and he shook his head. “I keep telling you to skip that hole and come hang out with me. Everything in here has ten layers of dust, but I promise the liquor is better. And I won’t charge you. Plus, you know my company’s better.”

Priest grinned. “Can’t argue there. I have way more fun over here.”

“Minus the lack of go-go dancers,” Oliver mused. “I mean, I guess I could wear booty shorts and high boots, but I’m trying to attract customers, not drive them off.”

Priest sucked in a breath. By the gods, was Oliver trying to kill him? He’d never be able to get that mental image out of his head—not that he really wanted to.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Trust me, you’d have a line around the block.”

Oliver’s eyes darkened, and he shook his head. “You don’t have to flatter me, Priest. I already like you.” His hand splayed flat on the glass counter, and he moved it closer—like he was begging to be touched, and gods, Priest wanted to know how warm he was.

Priest’s exhale trembled. He shifted closer, and then their hands were touching. Sparks flared to life under his skin, and the scent of lust was thick between them—both Oliver’s and his own. He stared into the human’s eyes, watching as his pupils dilated. Priest wanted to pull him close—not to feed but to taste.

He licked his lips, and Oliver mirrored him.

Everything in him felt coiled, poised to strike like a goddamn cobra. “Oliver,” he whispered.

Oliver leaned in close. “Yeah?”

They were less than an inch apart now. Priest could smell everything on him—his cologne, the soap he’d used in the shower, the cotton from his bedding, the faint traces of come after stroking himself off. He shivered, and Oliver swayed closer, prepared to take what he was all but begging for.

Bang !

Priest jumped, head twisting and fangs descending on instinct at the loudsound from the back room. Poe’s muffled “Sorry!” brought him back down to reality, and he took a stumbling step back, panic rising in his gut.

Oliver’s head dropped, groaning slightly. “I hate him. I’m going to kill him.”

Had they almost just…

He looked at Oliver—at the flush in his cheeks and how his eyes were a little red-rimmed. He knew that look, those signs. He was far too close to being under Priest’s thrall, and he could never live with himself if that happened.

“I have to go, sorry.”

Oliver started to reach for him, but Priest carefully stepped away from his grasp. “No. It was my fault. I?—”

“It wasn’t,” Priest interrupted in a hurry. “It’s not you. I have a massive case going on right now, and I’ve already been away too long.”

That wasn’t a lie. The Siren royal family was waiting, and Jeremiah would most definitely kill him dead if his fucking hunger got Remi hurt.

“I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

He ignored the shattered look on Oliver’s face and told himself it meant nothing as he rushed out the door without a real goodbye. Oliver was forbidden fruit. He was the temptation Priest could never give in to.

It had to be that way. For both their sakes.