“Let’s just pack up and get the hell going,” I said too loudly as I shoved everything back in my pack. “We have a full day’s travel to get to the keep.”
When we’d eaten and were packed up, Gus shifted into his beast and I strode toward him, cutting off Ursula again.
“You don’t wanna ride me, Rox?” Lothar asked, laughter in his voice.
I flipped him off, and he was still laughing when he shifted. I’d never heard a hound laugh in his beast’s form before, but I was pretty sure I had now. I ignored the question in Ursula’s eyes and quickly climbed onto Gus.
What the hell was I going to do when Urs and Gus left? I couldn’t be trusted alone with him. Definitely no more freaking sleep tincture for me.
Chapter
Five
Lothar
* * *
Music throbbed through the night as we strode up to Asmodeus’s keep. There was a party in full swing by the sounds. From what I’d heard, there weren’t many nights that he didn’t have a party.
As we reached the wide doors, Roxy handed me her pack, pulled the tie from her braid, and shook out her long, dark hair.
I frowned. “What are you doing?”
Rox ignored me.
“Just watch our little master at work,” Ursula said. “Give her thirty seconds and Asmodeus will be putty in her hands.”
Roxy gripped the door handles, plastered on a wide smile, and shoved the double doors wide. “Call this a party!”
Urs chuckled beside me as the demons in the room turned to her and erupted, cheering and greeting her like a rock star.
“Will me and Loth be welcome here?” Gus asked, scanning the room heaving with demons.
“You’ll be fine,” Urs said.
My lips peeled back, a rumbling growl shaking my chest. The beast didn’t like this, not at all. “What the fuck is this?”
Ursula smirked at me. “Asmodeus is hard to deal with, arrogant, reckless, an all-round giant fuck-stick, so Lucifer sent Roxy in to win his trust. She succeeded, epically. Now she keeps an eye on things in his quadrant and uses her charms to keep the lord in check.”
“Her charms?” I snarled. “Lucifer fucking pimped her out?”
Ursula’s green gaze sliced to me, and the promise of pain burned from her eyes. “Roxy is a warrior. She could slit your throat and slice off your junk before you realized you were wearing your own balls as earrings. You ever imply otherwise again, and you’ll be choking on your severed tongue before you finish the sentence.”
No one could make you feel more like a fucking asshole than Urs. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
She huffed a harsh laugh. “Sure, you didn’t. Now, how about you stay out of the way and let her get the info we need.”
“Roxy, baby!” A booming voice echoed through the room a moment before the lord of lust, chaos, and destruction strode into the room, arms spread wide. He was wearing leather pants and boots, no shirt. His face was all sharp angles, long nose, square chin, and cheekbones like blades. A wide smile spread across his face, flashing a row of pointed teeth, while light from the wall sconces glinted off the ram’s horns that curled back from his broad forehead.
Roxy squealed and ran at him, jumping into his arms and giving him a tight hug before pressing a smacking kiss to the leathery gray skin of his cheek. His hand dropped to her ass, and he squeezed it, hard. I stepped forward, a growl rolling from me before I knew it was coming—Ursula’s hand slammed into my chest, stopping me from taking another.
“Slow your roll, Loth, seriously. She doesn’t need your protection. Let her do her thing. You need to find Beelzebub, and if Asmodeus knows something, Roxy will as well by the end of the night.”
I shook my head. “I’m not fucking okay with this.”
“You don’t have to be. You just have to suck it up and let her work.”
A demon approached, carrying glasses of pomegranate moonshine, and handed them over. Urs gave me and Gus a shove toward a table at the end of a raised stage, where barely dressed female demons danced.
