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“You know what I mean,” I say. “You’re half human. I’m not talking about you. Or demons like Fitz.”
Ryder steps up close to me so our chests are nearly touching. His wet hair hangs in his face as he looks down at me. “All demons have a dark side, Ven. It would be best if you didn’t forget that.”
Then he turns and starts marching up the mountain again.
I feel like he’s slapped me in the face. What is it with him? First, he acts like I’m being too judgmental, and then he acts like I’m being too naive? Frustration bubbles up in my chest.
“Hey!” I growl.
He doesn’t turn around, just calls over his shoulder as he continues walking. “Yes?”
“What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
There’s a tension in his voice that tells me to leave it alone. Fat chance. It’s also really irritating trying to talk to him when he’s walking away from me.
“One second you act like I’m stereotyping all demons, and the next it’s like I’m some dumb little girl,” I call.
“Wrong on the first point. Right on the second.”
“Did you just call me dumb?!”
Ryder spins and I run right into him. “First of all, you said it, not me. I suppose overly optimistic would be a better way to put it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “So, it’s overly optimistic to say that you and Fitz aren’t the same as those demons we saw in the club who were about to eat us?”
“I seduce and manipulate my way through life,” Ryder growls. “I may not kill or steal souls like some demons, but I have that same darkness inside, always threatening to come to the surface.” He sounds angry, but his eyes hold… sadness.
“You’re a giant asshole,” I say. “But I can also tell that you’re a good person. Deep down, you are. Or you wouldn’t be helping me.”
“What makes you think I’m helping you for any altruistic purpose?” Ryder advances on me, so I have no choice but to step back. “Maybe, since I realized I couldn’t seduce you the same as everyone else when we first met, I’ve changed to a long game. Maybe I’m just doing this for the sex. Maybe, I’ve become obsessed with having you and I’ll stop at nothing to get inside of you. Did that ever occur to you?”
I blink, my heart pounding like a hammer in my chest. “I don’t believe you,” I say, but my words sound false, even to me.
“Do you know how I came to be, Ven?” He laughs, a bitter sound. “My father, also a lust demon, seduced my human mother, impregnated her, and then abandoned her. She died in childbirth with me because humans aren’t meant to have demon offspring. Their bodies can’t take it.”
Shock burns through me at his sudden confession. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Who raised you?”
“An old woman in the small town in Brazil my mother grew up in. She had no idea what I was. Neither did I. Until I got older.”
“That’s awful, Ryder.”
I reach out and place a hand over his chest. It’s instinctual, not meant to be intimate. He flinches as if I branded him.
“It is awful. I am shadow and fire and pain, Ven. I need you to believe me.”
The expression he locks me in is so intense that I shiver. It is certainly shadow and fire and pain, as he said. Also rage and lust and lightning. I see beyond his human appearance to the demon side, to that midnight place within him. Fear flickers in my stomach.
“I believe you,” I say.
“Good.”
His eyes flash, and he turns and continues up the mountain.
