The Dead Ringer
By
Michaela Haze
THE DEAD RINGER
Originally published in the United States/United Kingdom in 2019 by
DIRTY JEANS PUBLISHING LTD
www.michaelahaze.com
Copyright © Michaela Haze 2019
All rights reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination, and all characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A note from the author
The Dead Ringer is a standalone reverse harem romance. It can be read on its own without previous knowledge of my other books.
The Dead Ringer happens directly after the events of The Devil’s Advocate, and while Mara is affected by what happened in that series, she does not appear in that novel, and you don’t need to have read it to be able to pick up the story.
Unlike my other novels, The Dead Ringer is set in NYC and the surrounding areas. This is my first reverse harem (though I have written a Ménage called ‘Red City.’ You should check it out!)
I hope you love Mara as much as I do!
Side note:
I have included a glossary and a map of Hell, just in case! They can be found on the last page.
Love, Michaela x
Prologue
Antonio Salitari was my Spring Break.
The man known as Tony to his close friends and family was a Gangster with a capital G. He was my reward for not smarting back to my boss, Dermot Dirk, even when he made me run all over NYC cleaning up his messes.
I woke up one evening, peering out from behind Tony's eyes. His wife, Maria sat astride the middle-aged Puerto-Rican/Italian man with a pillow in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I knew who she was in an instant; Tony's memories were available for me to pluck from the dead man's skull like an easy to use search engine.
“... He's dead, D.” She whispered. Her voice shook as much as the hand on her phone. “I did it. We can finally be together. That son of a bitch—”
“And you called on an unsecured line?! Maria, put down the phone right now!”
Tony Salitari was still a deafening presence in his body, despite the fact he had suffocated to death a few minutes before. I cleared my throat, quirking a brow at the distressed woman straddling my middle. As the pilot of a recently dead man, I was unable to move much. A woefully dry sarcastic facial expression was all I could manage.
The beautiful young woman dropped the pillow she had used to smother her husband and threw herself over the side of the bed with a squeak.
Her head popped over the edge, like a prairie dog. “Tony?” She hissed. “Dio Mio! You're awake?!”
“And alive,” I added unnecessarily.
Maria stood up, her palms exposed in front of her as if she was trying to show she was unarmed. She backed away slowly, but I had lost interest in her.
I stretched out the flabby arms of my newly borrowed body and surveyed the coarse, thick hair. If I didn’t know that Tony Salitari was a valued enforcer for the Gambino’s, an Italian-American crime family, I would wonder why a model-pretty woman in her early twenties was with a man that looked like a deflated trifle.
“I didn’t mean to, Tony!” Maria started to cry, but no tears fell. “I just wanted—”
She continued babbling as I stretched and flung my new stubby legs off the edge of the bed. I cocked my head to the side and perused the curves of Maria's body slowly.
Ever since I had come to the Human Realities, I was determined to lose my virginity. To experience touch and connection in a way that I had never experienced as an incorporeal Demon.
My sexual orientation tended to be heavily influenced by the body that I was situated in at the time. Tony was not attracted to Maria, his murderous gold-digging wife. Even though she was gorgeous.
His cock remained flaccid as I flicked through his mental directory for memories of them fucking.
Nothing.
Limp as a noodle.
Thin enough to be one too.
That made me giggle like a little girl. The sound was wholly unnerving from the throat of a middle-aged man. I quickly choked on the sound.
Tony was very gay.
That worked for me. I’d always thought that I’d prefer to be penetrated rather than do the penetrating. My gender, if a bodiless demon could have one, was of the female binary.
I had two days in Tony's body before I had to evacuate. His flabby sack of skin wasn't what I had imagined wearing when I lost my virginity, but you take the opportunities when you find them.
“I k-killed you.” Maria stuttered. “H-how are you alive?”
I pinched the bridge of Tony’s nose and snorted a tense sound of aggravation. I didn’t want to rile myself up too much. I'd been told that it made my eyes turn into bottomless black pits.
“Maria, darling?” I reached into Tony’s bedside table and took out his wallet, his gun, holster, and cell phone. I did not look up as I addressed the hysterical woman on the other side of the room. “Shut up,” I suggested absentmindedly.
Maria's mouth popped closed. Her eyes bulged as she kept in her fear and confusion.
Muscle memory took me to the walk-in closet; I chose a silk shirt and fitted trousers. Tony's belly hung over the waistband, like a hairy grapefruit. I walked back into the bedroom, shrugging on a suit jacket as I went.
“Where are you going?” Maria demanded.
“You just killed me. I didn’t think you'd care.” I laughed as I turned the handle of the bedroom door and walked away to the sound of her spluttering.
I needed to get it together.
Typically, I was more careful, using the memories of the person I was riding to dictate my speech patterns and behavior. But I was on vacation. I was allowed to cut loose every once and awhile, wasn’t I?
Even if Antonio Salitari's body was my boss's idea of a joke, I’d make do.
I had two days before it was back to the grindstone.
I'd placed an ad on Craig’s List with a one-word title: Orgy. Then, I booked a room at the Four Seasons using Tony’s black AMEX.
I'd had lots of interest in my ad, so I sat on the edge of the divan bed, eating room service steak and waiting for ten random men to come to my room to bone me.
The room phone rang.
“Mr. Salitari?”
“Yep.”
“Your guests have arrived.” The attendant sounded bored.
“Awesome.” I chirped. “Have you got any hot sauce?”
“I’ll arrange to have some brought up to your room, sir.”
“Coolios.” I put the phone down and fiddled with the Saran wrap on the mega box of condoms on the vanity. I might have been riding a dead body, but I had no idea what Tony had and unprotected sex with strangers just wasn’t cool.
Or so I had been informed by the sexual health clinic posters. I had slipped inside a doctor the week before to remove the record of a Politian's daughter and her abortion.
What could I say? My job was eclectic.
A knock on the door came a few minutes later. I had enough time to remove Tony's pants and shuffle to the door with my rapidly hardening dick. The peephole showed a single beanpole of a man, holding a bottle of hot sauce.
I opened the door. The bellboy flushed bright red.
“Here’s your sauce, sir.” The hotel attendant did not look past my collarbone as he thrust a small bottle of Tabasco into my hairy fingers.