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“Here and there.”
How to Answer Evasively 101.
Wait, did she have a bruise on her throat? Or was that a…hickey?
“Honey,” Hazel said and took a slow step toward her. “Are you okay? Did anything happen to you?”
Rose clutched the lapels of her jacket tighter together as she moved back. Her shaky smile didn’t warm her indigo eyes. “No, I’m fine. I need to go to sleep now. Good night!”
And with that, she ducked inside her room and shut the door in Hazel’s face.
She couldn’t do more than ask. If she pressured Rose for answers, her daughter would only push her further away. If she started going through her things, checking her phone, or following her around, she’d give way to a mad need for control that would only end in estrangement worse than what she suffered now.
Rose had escaped a life of being a fae’s fancy plaything, a pampered prisoner kept on the tightest of leashes, sometimes banished to the dungeon, sometimes spoiled in a gilded cage as a treasured, albeit exploited, pet. According to what Hazel had gleaned from Rose’s reluctant accounts, her life had been controlled by her fae mistress to a traumatizing degree. If Hazel wanted any chance at bonding with her daughter, she had to grant her the freedom—and respect—to make her own choices.
So, she could only ask—while keeping her questions to a reasonable minimum—and signal that she was there for Rose, and hope and pray that the choices she made weren’t harmful…to herself or to others.
With a heavy breath that did nothing to ease the pressure in her chest, Hazel walked past Rose’s door. Once in her own room—the one she’d been in since she was a kid, the one she’d shared with Robert for a time while they were married—she got out of her clothes and into her pajamas, quickly brushed her teeth and scrubbed her face, and crawled into the bed. She’d bought a new one after Robert’s death. It soothed a jagged part in her, knowing he’d never shared this bed with her.
One of the hardest things to reconcile after he’d died was how much her grief intertwined with relief. One of the hardest things to accept right now? How much that still made her feel like a bad person, even after everything he’d done, even after Basil had talked some much-needed sense into her and made her see Robert for who he’d been all along.
That he was different in the beginning doesn’t mean he changed because of magic, Basil had said. He could well have been a narcissist all his life and simply managed to charm you for a while. That’s what abusers do.
For the longest time, she’d believed—wanted to believe, because it meant her love for him had never been based on a lie—that the oblivion spell the fae had put on Robert had turned him into a nightmare of the charming man she’d fallen for. And she’d clung to the belief that if the fae who had taken Rose from her in exchange for Basil hadn’t worked her magic on Robert’s mind, he’d have remained the loving, doting man she’d married.
Realizing—and accepting—that he might have played her from the start, that she’d been roped in by a narcissist, was a hard pill to swallow, but in the end, it had righted something inside her. Any notion of being responsible or to blame for the change in him, any guilt about the fact that she’d known about the babies’ exchange and about the magic Robert had been under while the silence spell on her had kept her from telling him…all of it had dissolved when Basil had suggested Robert had been a manipulative jerk all along.
She rubbed her hands over her face, the darkness in the room doing nothing to quiet her ever-spinning mind. Why can’t I shut off my brain? Or just find some relaxation, enough to ease her into sleep, at least for a few hours.
There was one thing guaranteed to relax her and blow off some steam…
“I can’t keep doing this,” she muttered, even as her thoughts turned to one off-limits demon she shouldn’t want, even as her pulse ticked low between her legs.
Considering his latest overture—the arrogance of it—she absolutely shouldn’t continue revisiting those illicit fantasies she’d cultivated for months. It was wrong. She should find some other inspiration.
Only, she’d tried that. And had to revert to Demon-I-Will-Not-Name as her blueprint when all the males she’d imagined had insidiously morphed into him anyway. It was like her mind was stuck on him.
And so, with a sigh, she simply surrendered to the inevitable hold the darned demon had on her and brought up his image as she moved her hand south.
CHAPTER 5
Warm, packed air wrapped around Tallak as he walked into Nine Circles, the demon bar suffused with all the scents even the dampening spell in the rooms couldn’t completely wipe out. With so many creatures possessing a finer sense of smell in one place, implementing magic to reduce the scent stress on everyone was a necessity. Patrons like demons or shifters wouldn’t stay long otherwise.
He stalked around the tables and booths, nodding at a few familiar faces here and there. Once at the bar, he plonked down on a stool and signaled the bartender. Samina frowned at him when she came over, her brown eyes narrowed as she leaned over the bar top.
“In case it slipped out that messed-up brain of yours,” she said, “this is your night off.”
“Can’t a demon enjoy a drink in a bar?”
One corner of her mouth quirked up. “You’re just banking on your employee discount to save you a few bucks while you drown your troubles in liquor, am I right?”
“I don’t have troubles.” He clucked his tongue. “For that, I would have to care. Which I don’t. See?” He gestured at his T-shirt.
“Chuck it in the fuck-it bucket,” Samina read out loud, then leveled him with a stare that would have shriveled a lesser male. “Really?”
“My new motto. Now, where’s the liquor?”
“Which one do you want?”
