AllFreeNovel
Share Us
12
FAITH
Ishould have resisted more. Should have done anything other than allow Byron to take me out to the park in the middle of the day. The sunshine beams down on us, but even though the warmth is much needed, it’s not enough to chase away the goosebumps on my arms. It’s cold outside, and all the tree branches reach for the sky like skeletal fingers. This is what humans must know as wintertime, but there’s no snow on the ground to at least make everything look more aesthetically pleasing. Disappointing, like most things that come from Earth. Except for Byron, who’s turned out to be a surprisingly bright spot in the city.
Byron clasps my hand in his as we walk along the path while people go about their business. Some bicycle past us while others simply jog, white puffs of breath billowing from their mouths. When I look up at Byron, I catch him staring at me with a crooked smile. Some of his hair falls in his azure eyes, and I have the asinine desire to push it away with my fingers, if only to have a reason to touch more of his face.
“What’s the point of this walk?” I ask. We come to a bench surrounded by gray birds whose heads bob clumsily while they walk. As I sit down, I say, “I thought you said we can’t afford toscrew around anymore. Not when I only have twenty-four hours left to find a suitable soul in order to keep my job.”
Byron sighs, and his own breath puffs in front of his face. But when I breathe, nothing appears.
“No, I said we were taking a time out. A time out is a pause, Faith. It means we’re going to relax for a bit because I think you’re spread too thin right now. You can’t work like that. You’ll burn out.”
I chuckle darkly. “I could never burn out. I was literally created for the sole purpose of soul extraction and enacting torture on the damned. Never once has a demon been too exhausted to do her job and I won’t be the first—"
Byron places his finger on my lips and grins. “Shh. That’s not what I meant. Youareexhausted. How long have you been working for that company, anyway?”
I think back to when I first opened my eyes in Hell and hum softly. Hmm… three hundred thousand years? Four? It’s hard to tell anymore since time is a human-made construct.
“It’s been a while, I think,” I say.
He nods. “Have you taken any holidays? Gone on any dates with other demons? You know, lived a little?”
“No, no, no, no. Demons don’t date. We fuck if we ever feel the urge, but it’s rare between our own kind. Not when we’re having so much sex with damned souls.”
His brows raise, and I know exactly what he’s thinking.
“Consenting souls, By. We’re not… we’re notthatawful.”
Byron shakes his head again and reaches around the back of my shoulders to squeeze them gently. “You just gave me a pet name, I think.”
I blink. Did I? “That’s not likely. What did I say?”
“You called me By,” he says, then presses the tip of his finger to my nose. “It’s fine. You can call me that. I prefer it to all theother things you’ve called me, anyway. So long as I can keep calling you sweetheart.”
“Absolutely not. I’m not sweet, and I eat hearts for breakfast. And by the way, they taste like metal and shit,” I say, huffing indignantly.
Instead of teasing me like I expect him to, Byron leans forward and brushes a tendril of loose hair that escaped my bun and fell into my eyes. Outside, in this form, I look like any normal woman on the street, with dark eyes and sun-kissed cheeks. No horns to speak of on my head, no tail to frighten children as they pass by. It’s a freeing feeling, to be inside a human vessel and to appear so… normal. In this form, I’m simply a woman like any other. Down in Hell, when people see the horns and tails, they know what I am and what I’m supposed to be. Up here, I can see an infinite number of directions my life could go in.
I could push him away, tell him to eat shit and remember his place, but I don’t. Because I want to know where this is going. Byron leans in, then, and presses his lips against mine.So soft. So warm.The movement of his mouth is chaste at first, like he’s testing the water to see how I’ll react. My heart thrums in my chest.
No one has ever kissed me before.
I’ve never let them.
And now with Byron kissing me, it’s suddenly all I want to do for the rest of my life. My very first submissive human, kissing me.Me. Unconsciously, my fingers find their way through his hair as I deepen the kiss, allowing my tongue to mingle with his in an exploratory fashion. We kiss, and kiss, and kiss until my lips start to feel chapped, and even then, I want to keep going. But he’s the first to pull back and inhale deeply and murmur, “Wow. You kiss just like I thought you would.”
I tilt my head and blink. “What does that mean?”
He cups my cheeks in his hands and smiles, his bright blue eyes twinkling in the sunlight. “It means you lived up to the fantasies I’ve been playing inside of my head ever since I first saw you.”
Ever since he first saw me? He’s been envisioning his mouth on mine ever since then? It hardly seems real, but then again, maybe he’s telling the truth. He hasn’t given me any reason to not believe him so far.
Then he’s on his feet and offering me his hands. “Come on, let’s get you someplace warmer.”
He leads me down the path, past a frozen lake where human children ice skate and play a strange game where they try to steal a black rock from one another. When one of the children manage to take it from another and smack it into a net, some of the children cheer while others whine. It’s a lot more wholesome than the fun we get up to down in Hell, where we like to play games, too… but usually with severed heads, skulls… that sort of thing.
Even after telling him several times that no, I’m not cold, Byron still feels the need to take me into a… what is this place? We stop on the street corner and when I look up at the gray brick building, I notice the large flags that cover the entrance with promises of art inside. We have art in Hell, of course. But it’s mostly sculptures depicting Lucifer’s impressive visage or monsters inflicting torture on humans. Nothing to get excited over, and certainly nothing worthy of buying a ticket to go see.
