AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m surprised a demon would use a safeword,” I murmured, staring at the chandelier overhead. The bed was absurdly comfortable, but the painting of the woman behind me was giving me the illusion of eyes looking down at me.
He sniffed, shaking his head. “We demons value free will above all else. We may play with the illusion of being forced, but what fun is it if your victim doesn’t desperately want you? We don’t call it that in Hell, asafeword. We all know to call mercy if the play needs to end. It’s a more polite, and rather more intimate, way of saying,Stop or I’ll make you stop.” He shrugged, then after a moment, shoved himself up off the bed with a grin.
“I’ve always wanted to desecrate this bed,” he said, holding his hand out to me to help me up. “Finally got to make it properly filthy.”
“Kent may have to burn it,” I said, as he wrapped me up in his arms and held me close again. His lips pressed against the top of my head, and I whispered. “I missed you.”
I meant it, but it set my heart pounding to say it out loud. He tensed, his grip on me tightening slightly. “Why?”
Because you make me feel safe, warm, wanted, and you have a monster dick that gives me the best orgasms of my life.
I wasn’t quite able to meet his gaze. “I like having you around.”
When I did finally look up, his brows had drawn together as if my words were confusing. He let me go to rub the back of his head, ruffling his hair. “Well, you’re certainly one of the first humans to say that.” He awkwardly cleared his throat. “We’ve spent enough time here. Let’s get down below.”
I’d never seen Kent open the way down to the basement; given that my binding circle was down there, I could simply teleport to it at Kent’s command. I could only leave the circle with his permission, and he’d usually phrased his commands in such a way that I had to immediately return to it when my tasks were done. The basement was a place I’d never wanted to step foot in again, never wanted to see nor smell nor come close to.
But here I was.
I knew the entrance was somewhere in his master bedroom, and I suspected it had something to do with the massive bookshelf against the far wall, with a strange gap at the bottom as if there was a track underneath. That was what I inspected first.
Playing with Rae, taking out my nervous energy on her as she did the same to me, had calmed some of my unease at being in this damned house. But it still lingered, a prickling of anxiety on the back of my skull. I hated this room. I hated the smell of it. I hated the perfectly clean carpets and white walls, and that there was still a faint smell in the air of those cigars Kent loved to smoke. I didn’t want to stay here for a moment longer than I had to, hearing Jeremiah and Victoria distantly in the house as they got drunker and louder. The temptation to go out there and slaughter them was strong, but Hell’s royals-in-charge frowned upon demons making spectacles of themselves in front of humans.
Slaughtering the Hadleigh siblings in front of a crowd of drunk college students sounded fun, but wasn’t worth the ensuing fall out from Hell.
“I take it you didn’t find the grimoire?” Rae asked from behind me, watching me as I felt along the underside of the shelves.
Oh, yes, I found the grimoire. But I’m too obsessed with you to leave you, so here I am, still risking life and limb to be near you, still driven absolutely mad by your voice and smell and eyes—
“No, didn’t find it yet,” I looked back over my shoulder and gave her a wink. “Lucky for you.”
The more I reminded her how “lucky” she was that I was still here, the more I felt like a complete asshole. Implying that the grimoire was the only thing keeping me from leaving was a vile lie, one she couldn’t possibly believe for much longer. I’d gladly admit I was generally a dick, but Rae made me want to be...nice...to her.
Only to her. Everyone else could get fucked.
In a far corner of the shelf, my fingers grazed over a cold metal plate set into the wood. I pressed it, stepped back, and the bookshelf moved silently across the track, slipping into the wall and revealing a stairway leading down into the dark. Rae gasped, stepping forward eagerly as if she was ready to run straight down into the dark. I pressed my hand against her chest, stilling her as fluorescent lights flickered on and illuminated the cold, concrete stairwell.
“Are there cameras down there?” she whispered, as if the stairs themselves might hear and tattle. “Or motion sensors?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. There’s only one room down there I’ve been in. We need to be quick.”
She nodded determinedly. There was a flush to her face, and her heartbeat had sped up again. She was excited—of course she was. Facing down a dangerous adventure? Better than a walk in the park apparently.
There was something so painfully hot about this tiny woman’s foolhardy bravery.
She went ahead and I followed, pressing another metal plate on the inner wall to close the bookshelf behind us. We went down two flights of stairs, and more lights flickered on overhead.
“Wow.” Rae’s eyes widened as she peered around the space. “This looks like a supervillain’s headquarters.”
“It may as well be.” I was getting a creeping, nasty feeling up my back being in here. The black-painted concrete walls and wooden floors couldn’t disguise the claustrophobic crushing weight of this place. Demons weren’t meant to be underground, yet that was where the Hadleighs had always kept me.
“Is this his evil conference table?” Rae said, smiling at her own joke as she circled the long, shining wood table set up in the middle of the room, lined with chairs. She’d taken her phone out of her pocket, and as she wandered around, she held it up to record. I didn’t have much faith in human justice systems, but if the Hadleighs wanted to make my girl disappear, it would only be harder for them the more records that remained of her whereabouts. Recording her exploration here was probably a good idea.
“I’d hear them talking sometimes,” I said. “His closest members of the Libiri would meet with him here.”
“And behind all these doors?” She looked up and down the room, at the thick metal doors secured with keypads. “How can we get in?”
“Electrical locks are easy enough to influence,” I said. “Take your pick. I don’t know what’s behind any of them, except the one at the end.”
