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“I...I liked to…” Fuck, it had been so long. “I liked to explore. To wander. I wanted to see the edge of Hell, see all the places even others of my kind wouldn’t go to.”
Wandering into the unknown, with hardly any plan and no expectations, was the wildest I’d ever felt. To lay in a dark woodland where no demon had set foot for millennia, or find some ruin of a city the old Gods built, was my freedom.
“You miss it,” she said softly.
“Every day.”
Our eyes locked. There was something about those wide brown eyes that felt as warm as her hand, as bright as the sun, as deep as the forest. Eyes that were searching my face for answers, for insight, as if she could crawl inside my head and nest there like a little bird.
“That damned curiosity of yours,” I said softly. “I was like that once. I think I envy you, to still look at the world with such fascination.”
“You can still,” she said, frowning. “Why not?”
“If you live in the dark long enough, you’ll forget what the light feels like.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, and she tossed the cotton ball aside, back on the coffee table. When she turned back, she laid her hand against my chest again.
“It will heal better now,” she said. “Just...keep an eye on it.”
“I have more important things to keep an eye on. It’ll be fine.”
“You can drop the tough guy act—you have a bloody open wound on your chest that’s likely infected,” she pursed her lips irritably. “I don’t know if demons can die, but it would probably be better if you didn’t.”
“It’ll take more than a few beasts to kill me.” I cracked my neck, and winced when the movement sent sharp pain from the wound down through my arm. “We can die, sure, but I’d have to be ripped to pieces—unable to heal fast enough to keep up with blood loss and shock. It would heal faster with rest but...I have to find the grimoire.”
“You can sleep here,” she said. “The couch is pretty comfortable.”
I tweaked an eyebrow at her. “Trying to tempt me to stay? You’ll have to offer more than a couch.”
She glared. Her hair had fallen forward, the soft black strands partially obscuring her face. I tucked it back behind her ear, my fingers brushing over the multiple studs and rings pierced through her cartilage. The sight of them made my cock twitch.
“Indulge me, doll,” I said. “Convince me to stay. Tell me your deepest, darkest desire.”
My darkest desires were tucked away in the back of my mind, the kind of things I’d only hinted at to my previous partners yet hoped they’d somehow figure out. They weren’t the kind of things I had any experience in speaking out loud, and his request made me protectively shove those wickedly secret things even deeper.
“I don’t know.” It was a lame answer, and by his expression, he knew I was lying, immediately.
He rolled his eyes, and a bizarre pressure squeezed the back of my neck. “Oh, come now, Raelynn. Don’t play coy with me.”
“Stop doing that.”
“What?” His crooked smile was anything but innocent.
“That little mind game...trick...thing.” I shuddered at the sensation of fingers running over my scalp. “I know that’s you. It’s...weird.” Weirdly pleasurable, in a way that made my mind feel void of anything but lust.
“Does it scare you?” His eyes widened. He was a sight to behold like this: entirely naked, fresh from the shower, so close that I could trace the lines of his tattoos under my fingertips. “I think you’ve made it clear you like it when I scare you, doll.”
I gulped, as the mere sensation of a touch around my throat was replaced with his actual hand; not squeezing, just holding. He gripped close beneath my jaw so I couldn’t lower my head, so I couldn’t avoid his eyes. “Go on,” he whispered. “Tell me your sins, wicked girl. Tell me what you think about when you’re alone, and your mind wanders. Tell me what makes touching yourself irresistible.”
I wasn’t ashamed of my desires—or at least I tried not to be, which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world when kinky sadomasochistic interests still resided firmly in the realm of taboo. It wasn’t as if I thought a demon was going to judge me; I knew he’d embrace whatever I told him. That was the scary part. Trusting him with those intimate pieces of me that I knew he’d be eager to indulge.
I took a deep breath and since I couldn’t look away, I closed my eyes. “I think about you hurting me, making me suffer, and rubbing it in my face how much I like it.”
Well, shit, there it was. Masochist Rae had come out of her cage.
When I opened my eyes again, he was smiling, his eyes reaching right into my soul and pulling out the rest of my raw words. “I think of you making me bleed, making me scream, making me come so hard I can’t think straight. I think of how easily you could kill me, but you don’t. You keep me alive to use me like…like…”
“Like a doll,” he said, and there was such wicked hunger in his voice that I shuddered. His cock twitched against me and I almost moaned, barely choking down the sound. “How cute. Do you want me to treat you that way? Like my little toy?”
