Page 17 of Demonic Delights

“I’m not complaining.” I rub my wrists and settle more comfortably on the pillow. “You’re different these past few days, and that’s putting it mildly, but I’m mostly enjoying the shit out of it. Even if I think we should talk about that too, at some point. Preferably with clothes on, and when I can focus on something else other than how good you made my pussy feel there at the end. Almost made up for all the torment before that.”

Silas doesn’t lie back down. He stays on his side, leaning over me and looking down on me with a strangely conflicted expression on his face.

“You did good, dark darling. So good that I think you must have enjoyed it.” His voice is low, almost as if he were talking more to himself than to me.

He surprises me by brushing a strand of damp hair off my forehead.

Vaguely embarrassed, I try to lighten the mood. “I did. It beat trying to write anyway.”

“Why do you do it then? You don’t need the money—even if you were making any, that is.”

I freeze when I realise that he has never before asked me this, not once, not even when I announced to him my plans to publish the first book three years ago.

“It was just a thing I could do from all the way up here. I mean, yes, I could be a computer engineer working remotely or a graphic designer, I guess, but I have no head for coding, and the few times I tried graphic design, I wanted to tear my own hair out. I studied literature. Writing I can actually do, you know?”

“Yes, but why do anything at all?”

There’s none of his usual condescension in his voice, none of that undertone suggesting that he’s merely catering to my whim. None of these thinly veiled accusations that if it’s not profitable and it’s not making me happy, there is no sense in persisting. Which is why—for once—I reply to him instead of telling him to go to hell.

“I wanted to feel like I wasn’t just rotting away here. Like I wasn’t just sat here, slowly wrinkling and withering away. I wanted to feel like I was building something up, not just watching things crumble apart.”

“Hmm,” Silas muses with a pensive frown, and he stays silent for a beat before circling back to the previous subject: “What is it that you write?”

“Mostly romantasy,” I tell him.

At first, I feel a little hurt that he wouldn’t remember that, but then I realise that it may be because of whatever is “wrong” with him. Much as I am loath to term anything that involves him railing me around the clock “wrong”. And so I go on and explain the plot to him: the perfectly ordinary girl who is actually an heir to a magical kingdom, the brooding immortal prince forced to seek her help, and the villainous count who wants to usurp the throne.

As I go on, Silas’s frown deepens.

“Why the hell would you be writing that?” he interrupts me before I can finish, then seeing my expression, he adds a little more gently, “I mean, why are you interested in writing that story and those characters?”

“Because romantasy’s popular. It sells,” I answer, petulantly, not hiding the hurt from my voice.

“Not for you it doesn’t.”

Before I manage to tell him to go fuck himself, he expands on the thought in a calm tone, as if completely unaware of how much his remark stung me, “I think that you trying to write that is like trying to train a Doberman to be a good lap dog.”

Intrigued by his line of thought, I swallow the swearwords I want to spew at him.

“A wholesome world full of magical creatures? Good-hearted, flawless, moral characters who find sweet, sweet love while defending their kingdom? That’s not you, Roxana.” He smiles at me, teeth sharp and shining in his beard. “You are a dark, horny little freak. Wholesome makes you cringe. You think that good-hearted people are idiots, sweet love would bore you to death, and the only one in that story who you would find even remotely fuckable is the villain. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Laughter bubbles up my throat and bounces off the walls in a strange echo.

“You’re not wrong,” I concede. “I would fuck the villain.”

“And I would tear his soul to shreds. Not for his crimes—those I applaud—but for touching what is mine.”

I laugh some more. He doesn’t.

“Be authentic to yourself is all I’m saying. Write what you can write well.”

I don’t respond to that, pondering his words and thinking at the same time that the Silas I know would never say something like that.

“Can you get me some water?” I ask, indicating the empty glass on his nightstand.

He raises his eyebrows at me like he wants to refuse.

“Na-ah. You edge me for hours and then fuck me like that? You go get me my fucking water, or else we’re going to have a problem.”