Moving quickly across the room, Devil squatted beside where Molly’s head rested on the couch and raked his eyes over her.  Bleary-eyed and flushed, she smiled at him.  “You wanna tell me how much you’ve had, honey?” Devil asked softly, reaching for the bottle Molly had tucked in the crook of her arm.

“Devil!” Molly blurted as she recognized that hypnotic voice talking to her.  Her eyes widened as she tried to focus on the man suddenly kneeling beside her.  “You weren’t supposed to invite Satan into my house!” she yelled, rolling onto her side to glare at Sami.

“Well, I’m sorry,” her friend retorted sharply, “I left my holy water in my other purse and I’m just plumb out of crucifixes.  I was relying on my faith in the Almighty to get us through the night, but evidently He’s busy right now.”

“Jus’ go home, Debil,” Molly ordered, slurring her words and swaying precariously as she attempted to sit up on the sofa.  “When da hell did I get on a tilt-a-whirl?” she asked, grabbing the side of the couch.  “Gemmee offfff!” she shouted to no one in particular before bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Oh, bless her darlin’ heart,” Vivian murmured to Sami, shaking her head as she watched Devil take Molly firmly by the shoulders and ease her down on her back.  “I haven’t seen her like this since the night He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named broke her heart.  Remember?”

“Who could forget?” Sami replied dryly.  “It took four of us to coax her off that bar.  You, me, Grant, and Satan’s spawn over there,” she added, lifting her chin toward Devil.  “At least she hasn’t tried taking her clothes off yet.”

“You wan’ me to strip?” Molly asked drunkenly, cocking her head to the side as she stared up at Devil.  “Cuz, I will,” she said happily, reaching for the buttons on her shirt.

“No!” Vivian, Sami and Devil yelled together as Devil lunged to stop her uncoordinated fingers from acting on her impulse.

“Clothes stay on your body, babe,” Devil admonished her gently.  Casting Sami a hard look over his shoulder, he growled, “Reminiscing about the past isn’t exactly helping the present situation here, Samantha.  Help me get this rum away from her,” he ordered as he and Molly continued their tug of war over the bottle, the dark liquor sloshing against the glass.

“Hell, no!” Sami denied, shaking her head wildly and taking a step backward.  “I tried to take a bottle away from her that night, too!  As I recall, she bit me!”

As soon as the words left Samantha’s mouth, Molly’s sharp little incisors sank into the fleshy part of his hand.  “Damn it, Sami, I may kill you if you don’t shut up,” Devil threatened on a pained hiss, quickly withdrawing his stinging hand and shaking it furiously.  He directed a look toward Samantha that made grown men flinch and quake in their shoes. 

The blonde, however, never batted an eyelash. She merely raised a challenging eyebrow.

Stepping between the two combatants before their exchange could devolve into a free-for-all, Vivian held up her hands.  “Okay, enough!  Everybody in this room cares about Molly.”  Seeing Sami open her mouth to object, Viv shook her head.  “Sami, you know it’s true.  Devil wouldn’t ever hurt Mols intentionally.”  Turning to look at Devil, she narrowed her eyes at the handsome man and smiled.  “He knows we’d have him killed if he did, right?”

Sighing heavily, Devil nodded and slowly rose to his feet to face Molly’s guardian angels.

 “Okay, good.  That’s wonderful,” Viv replied calmly, ever the negotiator that she was lauded by her colleagues to be.  “I’ve put a pot of coffee on to brew in the kitchen.  It should be done in about five minutes.  We all know that if we can get a couple of cups of it down Molly’s throat, she’ll sober up pretty quickly.  I suggest that we leave Molly in Devil’s custody and give them some time to work things out, Sami.”

Devil could have kissed Vivian.  “Thank you,” he said softly, meeting the brunette’s kind eyes.

“Are you insane, Vivian?” Sami snapped, turning to glare at her so-called best friend.  “He’s the one person that Molly should not be talking to tonight!”

“Samantha, he’s not going to leave,” Viv pointed out quietly, holding her ground with the skill of a practiced litigator.  “One way or another, he’s gonna say his peace to Molly.  I think that whatever he has to say to her is private, and if Molly were sober right now, she’d tell us to go so she could hear him out.  We’re in the way here,” she said truthfully.  “You know if I thought for a second that he’d either hurt her or take advantage of the situation, I’d throw him out of here myself.”

“Crap,” Sami muttered, her hard shell cracking slightly.

“Crap, crap, crap, crappity crap, crap crap,” Molly echoed from the sofa, tapping her little foot against the arm of the couch to some invisible beat only she seemed to hear.

“She’ll be safe with him,” Vivian reiterated to Sami gently.  “Not all men are complete slime.”

“Yeah,” Sami conceded, wrinkling her nose as she studied the situation.  “I know that.  I’m just not sure where Devil fits on the shitty spectrum, Viv.”

“Let’s give him a chance and find out.  Worst case scenario is that you get to unleash hell on Earth upon his soul, and I get famous for defending you during his murder trial.  I’ll get you off, too.  We’ll say you had hormonal deficiencies and weren’t in control of your own body. No jury in the land would dare disagree with me.  Men would be afraid of their wives, and women would give you the keys to the city. ”

Devil’s jaw dropped while Sami laughed.  Maybe Vivian wasn’t as soft as he’d originally thought.  She might well be the more dangerous of the two women.

“Alright, Devil,” Sami relented as she picked up her clutch from the coffee table, “We’ll go.  Just remember one thing,” she said softly, taking a step forward to rest a light hand against his chest.  “In the last half hour, I’ve thought of fifty ways to separate your penis from your person, and none of them are pleasurable, sugar pie.  You keep that in mind when our Molly sobers up, ‘kay?”

“Ohhhhh, penises!” Molly babbled drunkenly, lifting her head as her eyes widened with excitement.  “I like penises!  Big ones, hard ones, thick ones…”

“Oh, dear,” Vivian whispered as Devil winced, then patted his arm consolingly. “Good luck, Devil. I think you’re going to need it,” she offered before following Samantha to the front door.  “But if it helps at all, I think she should say yes to the dress.”

“And I’m equally certain she should say no to the ‘ho,” Sami uttered caustically before she stomped out of the house.

Closing his eyes as the door closed behind the last woman, Devil sank down on the couch next to Molly, falling back against the couch cushions and closing his eyes for just a moment of well-deserved peace and silence.  He’d successfully gotten rid of the two furies and had Molly completely to himself.  Life was good.

Until it wasn’t.

Because mere seconds later, he could only gasp as Molly’s hot little hand suddenly found his crotch and began investigating his family jewels.

“Lemmee see your cute, li’l penis, Debil!”

That’s when he knew for sure. 

God really did despise the Devil in all the worst possible ways.