“This feels good?” I ask, my fingers hesitantly pressing to his collarbones. My heart quivers as his lashes flutter from my touch alone.
He nods slowly, and a dirty thought makes itself at home in my mind in the middle of all this seriousness.
“Bet you wish your dick worked now, huh?” I whisper quietly, but judging by the low chuckle behind me, I’m not as quiet as I think I am in the hidden shadows of Damien’s body.
A slow smirk pulls at his full lips. Warmth sears through me at the sight of his small smile. I made him smile in the middle of all of this!
“I think we should look for Corva. See if there’s anything she can do for his pain,” Zaviar says in a muffled voice that I can barely hear.
The plus side of being wrapped up like this is, I don’t have to look at his scowling face all day.
“Maybe you two should circle the area and see if you can spot her,” Zaviar suggests.
I try to lift my head, but Damien pulls me harder to him, his muscles flexing as he holds me close.
“Don’t go, please,” he whispers with a shaking breath.
My neck strains, and I barely catch a glimpse at Zaviar. For once, he isn’t glaring at me. His pretty sky-blue eyes are clouded with worry and sadness as he stares down at his brother.
All of what he did with Corva, he did for his brother. He’s lived here for a year for his brother. Just how much is he willing to do for Damien?
Will there come a day that he thinks this is all too much?
He nods his head slowly. Apparently, today isn’t that day.
Zaviar’s palm settles on Damien’s shoulder. He squeezes hard, and then wind crashes over us. It’s a powerful and urgent wave of a force. I feel him fly off, but I never see him leave.
Boots storm across wood in a pounding sound, and I feel the breeze against my face. A big shadow swoops over us, signaling Ryke’s departure as well.
And then, we’re alone.
For several tense moments, all I hear is his thundering heartbeat and ragged breaths. His body shudders with tension from time to time as if he’s fighting off a pain deep inside himself, but he holds me in a sweet caress. His palms are so low on my back his fingers skim against my ass, but I never mention it.
I just let him hold me. I let him use me the way he let me use him. That’s what we have together: a terrible relationship that only exists when one of us benefits from the other.
It’s a toxic thing when I think about it, but it doesn’t feel toxic. It feels good to know I’m helping him. Even if I know he’ll hate me again when this is all over.
What if it didn’t have to be that way, though?
I take a deep breath and reach inside myself to prepare to do something I never do. Something that repulses me to even think about.
My gag reflex is already kicking up just imagining it.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” I say before I can dry heave against his perfect chest. “I’m sorry for putting you in the middle of my strange Krave relationship.”
His fingers dig into my skin as he moves his hand higher up to the small of my back.
“Why would you choose him as your mate, knowing your kind hates demons?”
It takes me a second to understand what he means.
“I didn’t choose him, Damien. Your soul chooses your mate. Trust me, if I had a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t choose someone who manipulated his way into becoming my friend, and then reported back my every word to my father.”
His thick lashes open slowly, and he studies me.
“Oh,” is all he says.
“Fated mates just happen. It’s something deep inside that your heart understands even if your brain never fucking does.”
“That’s very rare for seraphs.”
My brow furrows, and I can’t help but push my fingers through his messy golden blond hair. I hate the way my stomach is twisting hard right now as I study his handsome face.
“Demons have them,” I whisper in a voice tinged with sadness.
Someday he’ll have a mate. And I’ll be a jealous bitch, because Damien’s one of the good ones. He’s kind and honest.
When he doesn’t despise me entirely, that is.
And shit, the lines of his chest are so hard my tongue could dive in and spend hours licking every single hard part of him.
My throat clears as I shift against him, and I can physically feel Catherine roll her eyes at me.
I try to wash the dirtiness from my mind, but it’s like a stain that will forever tarnish anything innocent that might try to break into my thoughts.
But I do try.
“I can’t believe you actually admitted that I feel good,” I purr, my fingers skimming down the strong angle of his jaw.
A smirk tilts just near my thumb, and he closes his eyes once more like he’s too tired to talk.
But he does.
“You’re a pain in my ass ninety percent of the time. It’s only fair that I get some relief ten percent of the time.”
Get. Some. Relief.
That dirty stain in my thoughts will never wipe clean.
I focus harder on the important parts of our lives right now. My temples literally hurt like a migraine with how much effort I’m putting into this. It’s pathetic.
“Why do all this, Damien? Why put yourself through this instead of just accepting your fate and becoming a demon?”
The heat of his palm trails up the bare expanse of my ribs and down to my hips where my shirt and jeans don’t quite meet. What we have right now, this untouched moment, it feels intimate. It’s a trembling halt in time that I know with come crashing down as the seconds tick by.
“My parents were seraphs. They have similar views about demons being some sort of monsters. Seraphs aren’t as innocent as stories make them out to be, but my parents always held Zaviar and me to high standards. Standards we rarely ever met. As we got older, my father used to make a comparison. A threat of sorts to try to keep us in line.” He flinches again through the pain, and my fingertips trail up to skim the fine lines around his closed eyes. I can almost feel his pain right now. It hurts me physically, like I’m absorbing the agony he refuses to show. “My father used to say, ‘You keep fucking up like that, and you’ll end up a demon.’” His eyes open to meet my wide gaze. “He never said I’d be a fallen. He never said I’d be cut down and removed from the only home we’ve ever known. But he was right. And I just—I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, I guess.”
I blink at that response and the pain that’s still building and stinging behind my eyes.
He’s hiding more than he’s saying.
But he is saying it.
“You’re afraid,” I whisper with a tiny smile. “You’re afraid of becoming exactly what your high and mighty father always said you’d be.”
“I—yeah. I am. The magic in my veins, it was good. It was pure and chaste.”
I arch a brow at him.
“I mean, it was supposed to be. I wasn’t innocent when I was a seraph. How horrific will I be as a demon?”
Oh, my dear sweet demon.
“We’re not all bad. I’m a dark fae, and you don’t see me running around hexing people with evil, do you?”
“Your sister made a deal with me involving the discontinued use of my cock, Ari.”