Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

The last day of her life as she’d known it began with a demon breathing in her ear. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad start.

As Petra lay there, nearly suffocated by the weight of a full-grown demon, she tried to summon some great swell of feeling about what was to come or what she’d allowed to happen the previous day.

But there was nothing. After so much work, so many sleepless nights, and too many quiet tears, she found an unnatural stillness within herself now that the day of reckoning had arrived.

As for regret…

Petra turned her head as much as she was able. It wasn’t easy, since Silas had apparently decided to become a sentient blanket in the night. She only just managed enough movement to see a sliver of his face, nearly obscured by a fall of chocolate brown curls. She expected him to look relaxed in sleep, but he appeared quite the opposite.

His brows were drawn tight together, his lips pressed into a flat line. This close, she could even see that the skin around the base of his dark, slightly ridged horns was tense.

But the arm around her middle wasn’t too tight. His breathing was even. His smell, thyme and him, created a hazy comfort in the warmth of her bed. Which was ridiculous, because nothing about the man could be clinically defined as comforting.

Liar.

Petra let out a slow sigh. She had to acknowledge, if only to herself, that though Silas was clearly off his rocker and deeply amoral — at best — she hadn’t exactly suffered in his company. At the very least, he’d done marvelous work in taking her mind off of what was to come, and gave her several shattering orgasms on top of it. If nothing else, he deserved a bit of credit for giving her a lusciously sensual penultimate day.

And sometimes, if she really squinted and turned her head just so, she thought she could see something almost boyish about him.

Dim memories of the previous night’s conversation bubbled up as she admired the fan of his lashes, thick and sooty, where they lay against the tops of his cheekbones.

She remembered waking up to his low drawl and complaining about it, though she hoped she didn’t say anything about how she’d been enjoying what might be the last good night’s sleep of her life. There were clearer memories of bickering, their bodies shifting, and the odd, comforting pressure of his shadows wrapping around her body.

And then he asked her about food.

Obviously, it wasn’t something she’d talked about with anyone besides Max, but even he hadn’t known the true extent of her anxious habit. He knew enough about what had happened to her between the time when he faked his death and when he tracked her down years later to riddle him with guilt. She never wanted to add onto that load with something she could manage on her own, and she’d certainly never told him how she’d pawed through trash for food scraps or stolen things like shoes and blankets when the cold became unbearable.

But with Silas, the words had simply tumbled out. Not because she thought she’d find some deep well of compassion in him, but rather the opposite. There would be no pity from Silas. He was too frank, too removed from ordinary feeling, to weep for a hungry child.

Petra didn’t want pity or tears. Her life was what it was. The past couldn’t be changed, and she wasn’t special. Many children, particularly those who didn’t quite fit into the fabric of respectable society for one reason or another, ended up with worse fates than hers. She’d been rescued. Others hadn’t.

If she came out of it with scars, then she didn’t want someone to look at them and flinch. She wanted someone to see them plainly, with neither pity nor scorn, but with admiration for how she’d survived.

In the moment, Silas seemed like the perfect person to tell because he wouldn’t offer her platitudes or false praise for coming through adversity mostly okay in the end.

What she didn’t expect was the almost panicked note in his voice when he told her he’d get her more.

He didn’t ask more questions. He didn’t get angry on her behalf. His first reaction was to immediately connect her explanation to what he’d done and how she’d reacted to it.

Her half-asleep mind could barely comprehend it, but she thought she’d heard an almost childlike, anxious guilt in that simple promise and those that came after it.

Maybe she was reading too much into it. It did seem a little outlandish to assign guilt to a man who, rumor had it, had once been hired by three separate clients who all put hits out on one another and somehow managed to collect his payment for every single one of them.

But Petra didn’t want to think too hard about it. She didn’t want to regret wringing the last drops of pleasure out of her life in the most inappropriate ways possible. She wanted to live in the fantasy world where Silas was actually kind of sweet in his own awful little way for a moment longer.

Unfortunately, wanting something had never stopped the gods from doing as they chose with her life, and it certainly never hit the snooze button on her alarm — which picked that moment to ring.

Petra’s chest clenched. Here we go.

“Dawn service is too fuckin’ early.” Silas’s growl rumbled through the bed a moment before he scraped his teeth over the corner of her jaw, eliciting a sharp gasp. “But if I have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn, at least I get to watch you up there by the altar and imagine what it’ll be like fuckin’ you on it.”

I’ve changed my mind, she decided, pushing him away with a disgruntled huff. I actually hate this man.

“That’s not happening.”

“You didn’t have a problem with the idea yesterday,” he murmured, a hand sliding down her side to slip beneath her nightgown. Her body responded instantly to that proprietary touch and the gravelly purr that rattled his chest.

“I temporarily lost my mind yesterday. It won’t be happening again.” Not because she didn’t want to, but because there was no future in which she and Silas could pursue the electric chemistry between them. Whether she lived or died, their relationship would end the moment the Protector stepped foot on cathedral grounds.

A sharp blade of grief sliced her. Gods, I can’t believe I’m actually going to miss this man.

Silas’s shadows nudged her legs apart. She could have fought that slight pressure, but she didn’t want to. The thought that this was truly her last chance to experience pleasure made her soul shrivel and her body ache.

What’s one more orgasm before the end?

“Is that so?” Silas slowly slipped his fingers through the seam of her cunt, already slick and hot with arousal, and let out a dark chuckle. “Is that why you’re so wet already, baby? Or is it lying that gets you off?”

Neither. She hated lying and she didn’t love the idea of having sex in public places, let alone her cathedral. Not that Glory would care, of course. The only god who seemed to have a problem with sexuality in all its expressions was Loft, and that was only because their followers believed true worship could only be achieved in a lack of worldly attachments.

Petra canted her hips into his hand, slowly swiveling to match the rhythm of his slow, swirling touches. His shadows drifted across the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and up beneath her nightgown until her breasts were cradled by ethereal hands.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” she breathed, “that what gets me off might just be your touch, demon?”

Silas dragged the flat of his tongue over her jaw as he increased the pressure of his touches. A raw note in his voice sent a frisson of heat down her spine when he rasped, “Oh, I know you like it when I touch you. This cunt was made for me.” He turned her head, allowing him to lick and nip at her lips. “This perfect mouth was made for me, too. Your body is my pretty toy, isn’t it? Always ready for whatever I choose to give it. Because it’s mine.”

It really wasn’t fair that he tasted as good as he smelled, even in the morning. Petra rocked her hips and met his tongue in a slick tangle. Speaking in the gaps between luscious, filthy kisses, she challenged, “Demon, if you can make me come before my second alarm goes off, you can use me all you like.”

“Ah, my little goddess…” He startled a yelp out of her with a small, sharp slap to her core. “There’s no universe in which you aren’t mine to use, and there’s no alarm in this world that’d stop me from making sure you know it.”