Free Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series by Holley Trent Page B

knew what real couples did. He’d grown up in a cult, for chrissake. There, couples didn’t date or court. They were assigned based on their worth. A man deemed very valuable couldn’t have just one spouse, right? He’d have to have several — a whole harem of woman to form his amorphous energy blob in the afterlife. A man worth not very much, like John, got booted.
    He’d never seen his mother and her “husband” do anything casual together, and certainly not alone.
    He scratched his itchy palm. Best he stick with the plan. All he knew was dysfunctional. No woman in her right mind would want him, even if he wasn’t a cambion. And the fact that Ariel was so pleasant to him surely meant the poor dear was absolutely insane.
    Damn shame.

Chapter Seven
    Hitch hardly looked at Ariel from the time he returned from trashing the cold, leftover pizza to the point she sidled into the bedroom and pulled back the sheets. She tried not to be offended by it. Maybe the long day had finally snuck up on him. He hadn’t had a nap.
    Around ten o’clock, she set the alarm clock for early, hoping to make up some time on the road before morning traffic picked up. She tapped the lamp off and settled under the covers, eyes closed.
    The sound of the television in the outer room set her mind reeling. It wasn’t so much the programming, but the fact Hitch would rather watch that than seduce her. She didn’t look
that
bad. She’d even smudged on a bit of eyeliner after getting out of the shower. At least she looked
awake
whereas earlier she’d looked a bit like death warmed over. She’d even rooted through her cosmetics case and found the little bottle of perfume she hadn’t used in two years. It’d once been her favorite, but a certain someone told her it made him sneeze, so she stopped using it. Putting it on in the bathroom while waiting for Hitch to return had made her feel womanly for a change. Not just some dowdy country girl who didn’t try hard enough.
    She blew a raspberry into the dark. “I should have called Momma. Shit.”
    Too late for that. Momma was a night owl, but it was eleven there. That might have been pushing it. She closed her eyes once again. This time it wasn’t the sound of the television keeping her mind from stilling, but the disquietude she’d introduced to herself by thinking of her grandmother.
    “Shit.”
    She sat up, threw back the covers, and shuffled into living area.
    Hitch looked up from his space on the sofa — where he looked far too comfortable with a pillow and blanket from the armoire — but she ignored him for the moment. She found her phone on the table and woke it up.
    Momma picked up on the third ring.
    “I’ve been waiting on you to call all day,” she said in lieu of hello.
    “I know, I’m sorry. You worry.”
    “You
make
me worry.”
    “Fair enough. I just wanted to say goodnight. I stopped in Arkansas for the evening.”
    “Are you in a good hotel?”
    “It’s okay. It’s near the highway. They bumped me up to the honeymoon suite because of overbooking.”
    “All that room just for you?” Momma laughed.
    Ariel chuckled nervously. “Yeah. It’s comfortable. I need it, though, after days of driving. Every muscle of my body is tight. I didn’t know how taxing holding a foot over an accelerator pedal could be.”
    “Well, you’ve got everything tensed up. Try to take a hot bath.”
    That actually sounded nice. She’d opted for a shower for the sake of speed, but the tub was deep and wide. She could have swum in that thing. It was practically worth the ten percent up-charge on its own.
    “Maybe tomorrow. There’s a little gym here. Might pound the treadmill for a while and take a hot bath before check-out.”
    “Make sure you’re eating good.”
    “I’m eating like shit and you know it.”
    “You could at least lie.”
    “I’m bad at it.”
    “I love you for it. You wearing your cross? Locked the door? Deadbolt, too?”
    Ariel pulled her lip between her