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Fucking girls’ night.
“A bookstore,” I tried to clarify. “We found the book in a bookstore.”
“A mortal bookstore?” A growl emanated from his chest, making the air feel thick and too hot around him. “That isn’t helpful to me.”
Well, fuck. I wasn’t sure how to be helpful to a demon!
He took another step forward.
Everything in me tensed as I flinched back. My arms lifted over my chest as my eyes squeezed closed. “Don’t kill me, I don’t know anything else about the book!”
“Kill you?”
The darkness behind my eyes was somehow better than seeing the demon standing in my hallway. It was a single breath where I could imagine I was back in my kitchen playfully trying to remember how many glasses of wine I drank. It was the nothingness of the night before when I sat alone and tried to reason away the guilt that came from declining an invitation to church from Gran. It was the illusion of safety.
I jumped as heat pressed into the mark on my chest. My eyes snapped open and lifted to meet his as he leaned into me.
“Even if killing you was my deepest desire, I would never be able to carry out the task. In a world where I could burn every inch of humanity to ruin, you are safe from me.”
I made a face that would make my mother angry before she snapped ‘fix your face!’ as I looked at him.
“What?”
An exasperated huff left him as red smoke coated his black horns. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
I didn’t have to be very smart to know I summoned a demon while I was drunk as a skunk. Anything beyond that seemed something I didn’t need to bother myself with. That was the end all and be all.
A demon. In my house.
“You’ve unlocked the box and hidden away the key.” He pressed the pad of his finger to my chest making me look up at him.
I gasped. His flesh was no longer the deep red of the very blood I pressed against the page, damning me. It was instead, a deep warm brown. His hair was short. Faded along the sides as was popular right now, with a little bit of length on top where his curls coiled. His black eyes had lightened to a brown as he stared at me, the red smoke that enveloped his horns and made them disappear still wafting over his flesh as he bent a finger under my chin and lifted my face to his.
Warmth flooded my veins and I felt my cheeks warm. The tops of my ears felt unbearably too hot as my breath came in quick pants that left me feeling disoriented. There was a haze on my mind and a fire in my belly.
What the fuck was happening to me? It felt like I took a hit of ecstasy and could barely control myself.
My faculties had abandoned me.
He’s a demon. He’s a demon. He’s a demon.
I had to repeat the words to cement them in my mind so I wouldn’t take a moment to note how handsome he was. How the planes of his face were smooth, the height of his cheekbones captivating, and his jawline sharp enough to cut. He ran his tongue, almost as red as his flesh had been, over the plumpness of his bottom lip as he continued to stare.
The age of falling to my knees before a man was behind me. Any bridges that led there had been burnt to ash as I hit my thirties and began to thrive as a single woman but damn! As I stared at him, I finally understood how someone could let a demon lead them to their ruin. He was every sin I’d been told to avoid held out before me, wrapped in the most enticing package.
My breath came quickly as he leaned in further.
Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
What did he say?
Something about the key.
Hidden it away or something. Yeah, that was what he said, that I hid away the key.
“Is it really hidden if you can see it?” I had no idea what the deal was with the key that was now implanted in my chest. A part of me I couldn’t surrender or be rid of unless I decided to carve through my skin — fat fucking chance.
“Hmm,” his hum was the sinful sound that robbed me of what little breath I managed to steal from the thick air.
