Page 24 of Eat, Slay, Love

10

We fuck all night, in increasingly elaborate ways.

We’d each gone our entire lives without having a sexual partner who could keep up in this specific, particular depravity. For him, someone with magic, someone who could gather and redirect energy and focus it somewhere (his prostrate, in this case) while he fucked. For me, someone with supernatural strength and speed and claws and horns. Someone to whom my magic responds in ways I still don’t entirely understand.

It’s a match made in hell.

“Can we stay in all day? Just nap and fuck and eat cheese?” I ask Jonah when the light starts spilling into his bedroom, snuggling into his side and melting into his sheets. “This is already the best day of my life.”

He laughs, squeezing me closer. I run my fingers over the scars on his torso, and decide that I want to learn how he got each and every one. “That does sound divine, but I can’t, Mayari. I have to go to the soup kitchen.”

I sit up. “Fuck, I forgot. He’s coming. Someone’s coming.”

He sits up too, and starts smoothing hair down over my head. “It’s okay. It isn’t your problem. This is my family, that I’m meant to protect.” He gets his claws out and uses them to scratch my scalp.

I become jelly and re-spill into his side. “Belvedere, right? Why does that name sound so familiar?”

His hand stops for a moment, then resumes its petting. “He’s just a demon,” he says eventually. “A full one. Nothing I can’t handle on my own.”

“I’m assuming he feeds fully on people,” I say. “Core and rot and all.”

“Mmhm,” he says, humming against my hair.

“Not sure if you know this about me, but I’m an awful demon slayer,” I tell him.

“Oh, I’m very aware.”

“I could help you end him,” I offer.

His claws dig into my scalp for a millisecond before retracting completely. “No thanks,” he jokes mildly.

I dig my elbow into his side. “I just killed a pretty strong demon.”

“And almost died doing it,” he mutters.

“Hey, but I didn’t die. That’s what counts!”

He shakes his head with a smile. Kisses me on the forehead before climbing out of his bed. “It’s fine, Mayari. We’ll be fine.” He walks around the room gathering clothes while I admire the muscles shifting in his back and backside. “Can I see you tonight?”

I shake the hearts out of my eyes. “Yes. Please.”

Jonah stops and looks at me before walking out of the room, dragging his eyes down my nude form.

“Like what you see?”

He smiles a soft smile, just for me. “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had anyone in my bed. I like seeing you there, Nightmare. I hope you'll stay for a while.”

I do stay, for a few hours, dozing in and out, entering various rabbit holes about things like historic caving disasters and the appropriate way to prune a bonsai tree (it’s an art form, apparently).

Just for shits and giggles, I enter Belvedere demon into my phone.

Page one is a vineyard in Tuscany. Page two is a luxury hotel chain, and page three is a Reddit thread titled ‘Is My Ex Possessed?’. There’s also a Pinterest board labeled Dark Academia Aesthetic (Belvedere Core).

I refine.

“Belvedere occult.”

“Belvedere folklore.”