Page 73 of Pareidolia

I snort in response. “Luck is a fickle bastard who spends his life being jealous of Fate. You don’t need luck when you have power, little monster.” My mouth drags a wet line along his thigh and stops, lingering just above his soft cock. A low sound of desire crawls up the back of his throat as I hover there, and when he raises his hands to try to tangle them in my hair, the tendrils of my shadows streak out, catching them and pinning them to the bed beside him.

“So we hunt in the woods… but I’m staying here.” He squirms against my hold on him, but I can tell he’s not really trying to break free. Not really—not with the way his hips rock up in a silent beg for how close my mouth is to him.

“In your little human house, in your little human town.”

“You could stay with me.” It isn’t phrased like a question, but the longing in his voice is clear.

“You want a monster in your walls?” I whisper, dropping down and sliding my tongue in a slow, steady line along the length of his cock. He’s hard without me touching him.

Aspen laughs, pulling away to cover his face when the sound makes my head jerk up. When he peeks at me between his fingers, his eyes are warm.

“Yeah, Nox. I want a monster in my walls.” He drops his hands to tangle in my hair, dragging me back up the length of his body to press his mouth to mine.

I lick into the heat of him, drinking down the low moan that tears from his chest when my tongue invades his mouth.

He likes this—this kissing. He likes it when I taste him, when I set my teeth into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, then suck away the sting.

He melts against my body and willingly gives himself over for something as simple as my mouth pressing to his, and I’m caught up in how much I crave the reaction.

It’s nothing I’ve craved before.

It’s nothing I should crave.

It burns inside me, a heat, a spark. Something I was never meant to feel.

Humanity.

It’s not just devoured. It crawls and squirms beneath my skin, little pieces of Aspen trailing between the black thread that connects us and proving to me a question he doesn’t have the answer to.

He does have a soul, because it’s making a home in my chest.

CHAPTER 30

ASPEN

For a place I was certain I’d never see again—a town that felt so foreign to me when I lived here before… Duskfen is certainly doing its damn hardest to feel like home.

It takes another two weeks of cleaning to get most of the rooms upstairs sorted out, though I haven’t bothered to really go through the basement again. I don’t sell things, or try to pretend that I’m sentimental.

I use more money than I should to hire a dumpster, and I throw the majority of the shit that isn’t practical away.

What’s even more strange about the whole thing is that there’s a giant-ass moth monster in the house the entire time I’m cleaning.

Nox looks strange sitting in my childhood bedroom. It looks smaller than I remember with his wings filling the space.

I pick up one of the tacky knickknacks that my mom filled the entire house with and frown. I must have missed this one. “I wonder if I was even down the street before they started throwing my shit away.”

I looked all over the house, and there wasn’t a sign left that I’d ever lived here. No boxes packed with my name, no family photos hanging up. I’ve barely looked in the basement, so if they do have photos, they’re probably hidden down there and smelling like mold and mildew.

“Does it bother you?” he asks.

It should. At least, I assume it would bother someone who knew how to feel. Instead, I shrug.

“Not really. I wanted to leave. This was never really my home.” My eyes turn to my window, to the view I’d had my entire life of the forest. “It’s kind of funny. I never realized it was right out there, waiting for me.” I lean across him to pull the curtain shut before Ewan Daniels gets an eyeful of moth wings and calls the cops to come check on me. Nox catches me around the waist and drags me onto his lap, forcing me to straddle him or fall. I settle with my legs squeezing his ridiculously large thighs.

“I can still smell their misery lingering in the walls if it helps. They weren’t happy.” Nox tilts his head and inhales. “They were dying slowly every day, long before they were taken by Death.”

The laughter that spills from my chest makes him frown as he looks at me.