Page 48 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

Valefar, in the dark, with a frying pan in one hand and a knife in the other, fighting four shadow demons. His tail caught a pot before it could crash to the floor. His body took a hit so he could slide my grandmother’s casserole dish out of harm’s way with his foot. Fighting things that must have felt like hellfire—all so they wouldn’t wake my daughter.

I can’t fathom it. I can’t fully fathom him, and I’ve been trying since the moment he appeared in my circle, and every time I think I’ve got the edges of him mapped, he surprises me even more.

“Bethie?” he asks, voice low.

“She’s fine,” I whisper back. “Didn’t make a sound.”

He exhales, relief flooding out.

His eyes shift to that molten, shimmering gold. I recognize the expression, like he is feeling things he doesn’t have words for. “Have I told you what a beautifully, ruinously, and catastrophically terrifying creature you are?”

A grin takes over my face. It’s so sincere, so genuine. Heat rushes up my neck. I bite my lower lip. “A variation. But I’ll never turn down a compliment.”

And then I become aware of two things. Adrenaline is still going strong, humming under my skin, still ready for a fight, uncertain of how to back down.

The second is that the super soaker splashed back, too, and my white t-shirt is wet, and I am not wearing a bra, and this is now extremely apparent.

“What else,” Valefar says, his voice dropping a register, his tail beginning its slow, curling advance toward me, “would you not turn down?”

“Um, Valefar.” I point. “You’re bleeding.”

He glances down at his shoulder as if he’s checking the weather. “It’s a flesh wound. It will heal.” He rivets all his focus on me. “You did not answer my question, Vesper.”

Un-fucking-believable.

I shouldn’t indulge this. I should take him into the bathroom, clean him off, and fry every slice of bacon in my fridge for him. I should be careful, cautious.

Oh, to hell with caution.

I hold up one finger. Then I curl it.

He goes very still for a half-second. Then he comes off the wall with that slow, predatory intention that does something insane to my nervous system, the gleam fully alight in his eye, the feral edge of his smile scrambling my brain. And setting my nerves on fire.

“Worship?” he offers.

Heat surges between my thighs. “Oh, let’s just get to the fucking part.”

He closes the space between us in two steps. His hands find the hem of my shirt—both of them, certain and unhesitating—and he sweeps it over my head in one motion.

His pupils dilate. I’m not wearing anything underneath. Or below. His gaze drops, falling all over me. And then, to my absolute bewilderment, he begins to pace. Slowly, back and forth in front of me. His gaze makes a slow circuit up and down with an expression of enormous composure.

“Uh…Valefar?”

“Shh,” he hisses.

He actually hissed at me!

I’m standing in my own kitchen, entirely naked, while a seven-foot demon regards me like a professor about to deliver a lecture, and something jolts in me which can only be described as what in the actual⁠—

He stops. He wags his finger at me. And…I clock this with my full attention; his tail wags once, in the same rhythm.

“You were a naughty girl, Mistress.” His voice is a deep husk I don’t recognize, but it rips through every defense or debate and erupts tingles all over my skin. “I told you to get Bethie and run.” A beat. “I believe you were so naughty, in fact, that it warrants…” He tilts his head, his lips spreading, “…a punishment.”

The word hits me somewhere south of rational thought and slightly north of my knees giving out. My mouth falls open. “Oh, my god.” I stare at him. “Have you been reading my adult books?”

He gives me the most brazen smile I have ever seen, his teeth just visible. “Perhaps,” he says. “Now.” His voice drops further, warm and certain and entirely wicked. “Are you going to be a good girl, turn around and bend over that counter so I may give you your proper punishment? Or will I need to make you?”

At first, I consider being a brat. But between what he just did here, and since this is his first time trying this sort of roleplay, I want him to know how much I trust him. How safe I feel to let him…experiment.