“Are you a virgin?”
“What?”
“Are you a virgin?” he repeated.
“No!” I said adamantly. Sure, maybe I was a little bit chunky, but I wasn’t a damn swamp troll. Cade had been hot. A personal trainer. Tattooed. All my friends had been envious when we’d gotten together. Well, I guess they weren’t envious anymore, considering he’d slept with all of them. Tears welled in my eyes again.
Fuck Cade. You have bigger problems right now,I told myself sternly.
The demon walked around my tiny apartment, picking up my things and examining them, completely unperturbed by the sprinklers. “Well then, there would be no point in bathing in your blood. It has no special ritualistic properties. It would just get crusted in my hair, and it is a real pain in the horns to get out.”
I blinked. “Oh. Okay. That’s good,” I said dumbly.
He stopped at the fire bucket, which was now filled with water, and pulled out a picture of me and Cade, looking happy at last year's work Christmas party. When I looked at it now, I noticed that I was smiling at the camera, but Cade? He was smiling off to the side. Probably at Madison, the new secretary. And her tiny skirt. And her really, really long legs.
That photo made me feel even more miserable.
“Would you like me to dismember him?” the demon asked, quirking a dark, straight eyebrow.
Clearly, I’d had too much to drink and fallen into a coma. I had to hope someone would find my body before I turned to goo and decomposed into the carpet. Considering this was probably a coma dream, and pesky things like morals and ethics didn’t really matter, I had to ask myself, did I really want Cade dismembered?
I sighed heavily. “No. But thanks for the offer. Is there something a little less permanent?”
The demon smiled sexily, which was disconcerting, since his teeth were all pointed, except the front two. “I could flay him? With enough medical intervention, I am sure he would survive.”
Well, who didn’t love a good flaying?
The demon began to walk toward me, and my eyes involuntarily dropped to his dick again. I couldn’t help it. It was like a freakin’ metronome or something, swinging to and fro infront of his strong, muscular thighs. I noticed his whole body was coated in swirling black runes that seemed to disappear if I looked at them directly. Those I managed to look away from, because I was a little worried I’d vomit from the motion sickness.
A steady thumping on my door let me know that the building manager had worked out that I’d been the one breaking the rules. “Miss Watson! Miss Watson! Are you okay? Have you got an open fire in there? Miss Watson!”
My head whipped between the naked demon and the door. “You need to leave,” I hissed. “Back to Hell ye go!” He raised both eyebrows at me, but didn’t move. “You can’t be here. I’m not allowed… pets.”
Oh. Now he looked pissed. But with a snap of his fingers, he put on a meat suit. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better term for it. He ran his hands up his body, starting at his feet. The swirling tattoos disappeared first, replaced with black hair. He was now clothed in tight, boxer-style underwear that did nothing to hide his junk, and by the time he brushed his hands over his horns—making them disappear back into his head—I was fully freaked out. It was like he was zipping himself into a sleeping bag or something.
“Am I less pet-like to you now?”
He was fuckinggorgeous, and I was a dead woman walking. I just nodded and walked over to the door in a daze, opening it to Frank, the Super. He was a bit of a creeper, and he’d also been friends with Cade, so he was doubly bad in my book.
I realized I was still in my underwear and a tank that saidI Woke Up Like Thiswhen Frank’s eyes went straight to my boobs, then down to my exposed thighs. He didn’t seem impressed, and I wanted to both punch him in the face and lick the remaining vodka out of the sink.
Frank lifted his eyes back to my face. “Do you have an open flame in there, Miss Watson?”
I rolled my eyes. “Call me Elsie, Frank. It’s not like I haven’t seen you puking your guts up and crying that Lucy in 6B rejected your petition for a date.”
Frank’s top lip curled. I knew he was about to unleash some scathing comment, but suddenly, the demon appeared behind me. Frank took in my lack of clothes and the underwear clad demon, and drew the wrong conclusion. A conclusion I was one hundred percent on board with.
“That’s not Cade.”
“No, Frank. This is why they pay you the big bucks. Can’t get anything by you.” The demon’s chest warmed my back, and a shiver rippled over my skin. “As you can see, I didn’t light any fires tonight. Try Mrs. Chan next door—maybe she left her wok on again.” I’d take Mrs Chan a box of those Belgian chocolates she liked to apologize for throwing her under the bus.
Frank continued to look between us, like he was trying to do the mental arithmetic where you added my thigh dimples to the demon’s well-defined abs, and was beginning to realize that something didn’t add up.
But the demon, for whatever reason, ran his hand around my hip and across my stomach, pulling me tight against his chest. He put his lips next to my ear. “Can I decapitate this one?”
I honked out a rather unsexy laugh. Frank’s eyes were now as wide as saucers. “I gotta go, Frank. Good luck finding”—the demon growled in my ear, and I shivered again—“whatever.” Then I slammed the door and backed up against it with a thud, putting a bit of space between me and the demon.
He was grinning widely. “Oh, that was fun.” He sighed, shook his hands, and then his meat suit went up in flames.
