Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The priest madethe sign of the cross and muttered a prayer while I turned on my heels in slow motion, grimacing.

“How did you—” I broke off when I saw him.

Yowza.

No wonder the priest looked ready to douse himself in Holy water.

The demons’s wings were on full display, blacker than midnight but glowing with an inner fire, flames licking over the feathers. As if that wasn’t enough of a statement, though, shadows writhed around the demon’s form, like a dark visualization of his energy. His eyes glowed in the mix of infernal firelight and late-night gloom.

He looked like something straight out of a paranormal thriller. I shivered despite the heat emanating from him, my heart thundering. He hadn’t been this scary in my apartment. It was like he’d amped up his natural presence by a thousand degrees. Or maybe this was his usual appearance, and he’d actually muted it before?

Either way, this was an impressive display of power.

I swallowed. “Are you deliberately scaring the priest?”

A ghost of a smile flashed across his face, before he refocused on glaring at me with the full force of his demonic grouchiness. Someone sure was pissed. Probably had something to do with having to chase a recalcitrant bride-to-be across town...

I cringed a little. “How did you find me?”

“I followed the scent of pepper spray and desperation.”

He was so annoyingly good at deadpanning. Circumstances being different, I’d have appreciated his brand of humor.

“So you thought,” he said, “running to a priest would get you out of this?”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.” I rubbed my earlobe. “But just to be clear—would that be an out?”

“No. You agreed to a covenant with a demon. No priestly intervention would nullify that contract, or absolve you of the consequences for breaking it.”

Crap. There went that idea.

“So hiding in a convent for the rest of my life—”

“Wouldn’t work. You’d be dead and burning in Hell before you even got there.” He glanced at the clock on the facade of the church spire. “We have an hour left to fulfill the terms of the contract. I doubt you’d make it to a convent in time. Not that being on Holy ground would do you any good, anyway.” He smirked. “That’s a nice little myth invented by humans.”

Dread settled in my stomach. “Hold up—what did you mean by ‘burning in Hell?’”

“If you fail to fulfill the contract, you die and your soul goes straight to Hell to be punished.” He paused, tilting his head as if in thought. “Of course, we don’t always burn the damned souls. That’s just one method of torture. There’s also the ice box, the shredder, the spikes and presses, feeding time for the hellhounds, the acid bath, the David Hasselhoff music marathon—”

“All right, all right, got it!” I rubbed my face with both hands.

Behind me, the priest kept murmuring prayer after prayer, his voice breaking.

“Can you at least tone down your demonic impressiveness?” I asked quietly with a nod to the poor cleric at my back.

Or better yet... I turned around and touched the priest’s arm. He jumped and gaped at me, his face a mask of terror.

“Go,” I said softly.

There was nothing he could do to help me, and he didn’t need to stay in a veritable demon’s presence any longer than necessary. He’d already been traumatized enough.

“Go,” I repeated with more insistence.

The priest startled as if waking up from a trance. One more fearful look over my shoulder, and then he turned to run.

Or rather, tried to. He stopped mid-movement, frozen in place as if someone had pressed pause on his personal movie.

“Actually,” the demon’s dark voice came from behind me, “he can do the honors of being witness.”

I whirled around and glared at him. “You’re really into forcing people to do stuff for you, huh?”

He cut me a withering look. “You forced me into this contract. And we need a witness.”

“You can’t make a priest officiate this—” I gestured wildly between us “—for a demon. That’s cruel!”

“First of all, he doesn’t need to officiate. He just needs to witness our vows. Second—you’re pleading with a demon not to be cruel?”

Ugh.

“We need a witness,” the demon went on, “and he’s conveniently here right now. He’ll stand witness for our wedding, end of discussion.”

Delayed emotional reactions are a weird thing. I’d been arguing with this jerkface the entire time, but it was this instance of the word wedding that triggered the reality of what was happening to break over me like a tidal wave. I swayed under the impact, grasped the church door to steady myself.

Wedding.

To a demon.

To live in Hell.

Fuck me.

I’d never wanted to get married—well, not entirely true. Pre-thirteen-year-old me had held hopes for a romantic, grand wedding to the man of my dreams, a notion I had later come to despise as naive and foolhardy. Marriage was nothing but a sham built on lies and betrayal.

It had been eleven years, but the wound still burned as raw as the day I’d sat on those stairs, listening to my mother’s screams, my dad’s increasingly frustrated shouts…watching him drive off, eventually, to live with his other family.

So yeah, the concept of marriage? Something I’d sneered at for the past decade, so sure I’d never make that mistake.

Turned out I’d already made it when I was thirteen and got this whole covenant thing rolling.

Why, oh why couldn’t I have simply played with a standard-issue ouija board, like any respectable teen?

But no, instead I’d dabbled in the kind of real dark shit that made me end up stuck between a rock and a hard place. No matter what I did, I’d end up in Hell. Either as a bride to a cranky demon, or as a damned soul. And if Hell was anything like the mythological descriptions of it... I shuddered.

“Priest,” the demon called out, snapping his fingers.

The miserable cleric moved closer, stiffly and with halting steps, as if—forced to walk against his will.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Don’t do this to him,” I bit out.

The demon ignored me, instructing the priest how to witness our union.

“Please find someone else.” There, I’d even used the pretty P word.

It was like he didn’t even hear me. I might as well have been talking to a bush.

Well, if this was a taste of the rest of our marriage, it got me fuming already. If there was one thing to which I responded with irrational pettiness, it was being ignored.

“You’re acting like this is a done deal,” I said loudly and crossed my arms.

The demon paused in verbally wrangling the priest into submission and turned to me. “Don’t be silly.” His tone was so condescending that heat rolled through my body in a searing wave of indignation. “The choice is clear. Pretending to still waver is laughable at best. We both know you don’t want to suffer the consequences of breaking the covenant.”

I pursed my lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me breaking the contract would result in consequences for you too, since you’re the other party to the agreement and all. What’s the punishment for you? Will you be tortured as well?”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Maybe you’ll be demoted?” I continued, my anger about being ignored fueling my probably suicidal poking of Mr. Tall, Dark, and smokingly Handsome. “Will they make you scrub demon toilets for the next thousand years? Or maybe they’ll strip you of your powers and take your wings?”

The heat emanating from him flared up like a bonfire liberally sprinkled with gasoline.

Bingo. I smiled. “That’s it, huh? No more convenient demon magic and flaming wings for you. So,” I said, idly regarding my nails, “if I were petty—because, say, a certain groom-to-be has been a dismissive jerk with no respect for my opinion—I could totally decide to break the covenant and make you suffer along with me.”

The demon bared his teeth. “You wouldn’t.”

“You underestimate my level of petty,” I snapped. “If I’m going to be miserable in Hell either way, I might as well share my pain with His Demonic Haughtiness.”

“Stop being dramatic,” he growled. “You cannot seriously compare being married to me with being tortured as a damned soul.”

“Why not? You’re doing a bang-up job of making me see the similarities.”

His wings vibrated. The thrumming power in the air increased, pressing onto every inch of my skin. I had trouble breathing against the thickness of his energy, like I’d just walked into a hot house with enough humidity to constrict my airways.

The priest whimpered.

Gritting my teeth, I steeled my fluttering nerves. “Tone. It. Down.”

The demon snarled at me. Not the kind of figurative snarl of humans when they’re cranky, no. The sound coming from his throat was that of a canine warning you not to be stupid. It was the bone-chilling, rumbling growl that humans had instinctively learned to fear—and heed. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up, and I had the insistent urge to back away slowly.

Fuck. That.

I would marry this ass because I truly didn’t have a choice, but I would rather burn in Hell than enter this marriage cowering in fear. So he would either have to start playing nice or I would throw all reason to the wind and break this fucking covenant.

“If you want me to agree to this wedding,” I said, surprised my voice came out steady past the lump of dread in my throat, “then you need to adjust your attitude. You’ve been condescending, scornful, and dismissive. I asked you not to force the priest to witness, and you ignored me. Let him go, treat me with respect, and I’ll consent to the marriage.”

“Respect,” he gritted out, “goes both ways. You attacked me with pepper spray—” he held up one finger “—you lied to me—” he held up a second finger “—and you ran away from me trying to sneak out of a contract you initiated.” He added a third finger. “Don’t lecture me on respect when you’ve been untruthful, evasive, and insulting all night.”

Oh, that self-righteous bastard.

“Excuse me for freaking out that a real-life demon showed up unannounced in my living room!”

“It wouldn’t have been unannounced if you hadn’t forgotten you summoned me!”

Gah, we already sounded like an old married couple.

“Fine, so we both made mistakes!” I threw my hands up. “But if you think I’m bluffing and will cave and marry you anyway, you’ve got another think coming. You want something from me, and you’re going to be nice about it or you’ll end up without your powers. And we both know you can’t force me to marry you.”

Granted, I was gambling. I didn’t know that for sure, but I had a hunch the contract—the pertinent parts of which still eluded me—might have a provision like that. Just like it probably had one that specified he couldn’t kill me to get out of it—because if it didn’t, I was certain I’d be dead already.

His eye twitched.

Right on the mark.I made a mental fist pump. “You can’t use force or coercion, which means you will actually have to be nice to me if you want to keep your demon powers. I’m asking you to let the priest go and find someone else—without using your infernal powers of intimidation. We just need a witness, right? So let’s go grab a semi-drunk from a bar and tell them to listen to our vows. They’ll probably think it’s cute. Boom, done! No one got forced or traumatized.”

The demon stared at me for such a long moment, I had to resist the urge to start humming the Jeopardy melody.

I shifted my weight from one foot to another, but kept eye contact with him. I had a feeling this was a decisive moment, that looking away or lowering my gaze would send the wrong message. Like that one time I won the stare down against the bully cat of the neighborhood, after which that cantankerous feline would finally let me pass its favorite hedge without swiping at my legs.

The demon uttered a sound between a sigh and a snarl and rolled his eyes heavenward. “You’re insufferable.”

Me, insufferable? That was rich coming from the dude who’d been a pain in my ass all night. I relaxed a little, though, relieved I didn’t have to hold his gaze any longer. The contact had been so intense that I’d wanted to squirm. Beautiful his eyes might be, they were far too perceptive for my liking.

Some people you meet, when they look at you, their gaze seems to bounce off you, like sure, they notice you’re there, but it’s surface level. Mostly, that suits me just fine.

But then there are those whose perception of you catches you off-guard. When they look at you, their attention arrests you, their gaze cuts deeper, and suddenly you feel exposed, naked in a way you’re not used to. Like they can read every minute detail of your expression, your voice, the way you breathe.

It has nothing to do with sexual attraction or gender—I’ve met people from all kinds of identities who had that effect on me.

But when it is coupled with a simmering sexual attraction—unbidden and annoying as it might be—it makes the intensity of that contact even worse.

Anytime I had to hold the demon’s gaze longer than three seconds, I felt layers of myself unwrap themselves that I sure as fuck wanted to keep as tightly folded as the silly love notes I used to pass in class to my crush in second grade. Those were origami-style intricate.

The demon had meanwhile turned to the priest and released the poor guy from whatever spell he’d been under. The priest shuddered, shook himself, and threw an anxious glance at me. I nodded at him to leave. There was nothing he could do for me.

The next moment he’d run toward the parking lot, likely to get his car and get the fuck out. I sighed wistfully. Getting the fuck out sure sounded great.

Alas, I was still sort of betrothed to an overbearing jerk of a demon—who just in that moment snapped his fingers in front of my face.

I turned slowly toward the bane of my existence, fully intending to skewer him with a furious look, only to be brought up short by his magnetic appearance.

He’d toned down the dark vibe and retracted the wings, leaving only a trace of his energy, which unfairly came across as sexy smolder.

He should not be smoldering at me, goddammit.

And yet he looked like something out of a sensual fever dream, all dark hair and piercing eyes, his attention on me causing the perfect mix of thrill and danger.

Awareness raced over my skin in tiny, delicious shivers. If this were a dream, I’d climb him like a tree.

“Get moving,” he said, effectively dousing the flames of my irrational desire. “We’ve lost enough time with your capricious demands.”

“Watch,” I gritted out, holding up a finger, “your tone. I can still decide to damn it all to hell—literally—and break this covenant if you keep being insulting.”

The muscles in his face contracted, turning him into a vision of suppressed rage. He probably wasn’t used to someone standing up to him. His Grouchiness was likely a high-ranking demon in Hell, with underlings and subordinates who withered at his glower. Must be nice to have others waiting on you and jumping to fulfill orders. It would also explain a lot of his behavior, not that it made me more forgiving toward his assholishness.

“Find a bar,” he growled, “so we can secure an inebriated individual for the ceremony.”

I whipped out my phone and looked up the nearest establishment that promised to have at least one poor drunk who would play along. Turned out the bar was just a block away, open late, and seemed popular for cocktails among the younger crowd. Perfect.

“This way.” I indicated the direction with a nod and started walking.

My own personal demon trailed me like a brooding shadow. He didn’t speak a word, and I was just fine with that, considering anytime he’d opened his mouth earlier only made me want to strangle him.

Which was a novelty for me. I usually didn’t harbor violent thoughts toward others, even when they annoyed the crap out of me. But with this guy, I had the clear vision of putting my hands around his throat and squeezing hard. Of course, given I was puny compared to him, as well as his supernatural ability to not even blink when exposed to pepper spray, all I would accomplish by trying to strangle him would be to dangle off his neck like a grotesque human piece of jewelry.

We’d arrived at the bar, which had a few outside tables clustered around heaters on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. One of them was occupied by three women my age who looked to be deep into their cocktails, judging by their slurred speech and high-pitched giggles.

I turned toward the demon to tell him to let me do the talking. The thought of His Menacing Surliness attempting to persuade three humans to “witness our vows” gave me the heebie jeebies. One look at his broody face, and they’d run for cover.

Before I could even get the words out, he’d stepped past me to the table, one hand in his pants pocket, the other on his heart, and made a small bow. “Good evening, ladies,” he crooned in a voice that made sensual heat slick over my nerve endings, centering between my legs. “Forgive the intrusion, but I was hoping you’d be so kind to help me and my fiancée out.”

All three women stared at him, spellbound.

“This might sound silly,” he continued, his tone soothing and invigorating at the same time. His voice was mesmerizing, making me inch closer. “But we’re getting married tomorrow, rather spontaneously, and we’d love to do a run-through of the ceremony in front of someone else.”

The women had leaned toward him as he spoke, enraptured.

My mouth hung open.

“You see, we eloped.” The demon gave them a smile that made my heart stumble. “And we don’t have any friends or family here to practice with. We’d be ever so grateful if you lovely ladies listened to our impromptu vows.”

The women sighed and giggled, one of them twisting a strand of her hair while giving him the most obvious bedroom eyes I’d ever seen someone sport.

Oh. My. God.

This jerk of a demon could be Prince fucking Charming—when he wanted to. My blood boiled. He’d been an ass to me all night, and here he was being the epitome of a gentleman, with an ease I’d never thought him capable of considering his condescending demeanor toward me.

While I’d been stewing in my renewed irritation about my betrothed, the women had all but fallen over themselves to agree. The demon turned to me, a glint of something I couldn’t quite place in his stormy eyes. His smirk held a distinctive smugness I wanted to erase with acid.

“Shall we?” he asked.

My answering smile may have shown too much teeth.

“Dearly beloved,” the black-haired of the women intoned with all the fine enunciation of someone on their third cocktail.

Her two friends snickered as she went on with a rather garbled medley of an officiant’s speech that was likely pieced together from various movies and TV shows featuring a wedding.

Finally, she arrived at the pertinent part. “I...” She trailed off, gesturing to the demon.

“Azazel,” he supplied, and his name sent a shiver down my spine.

“I, Azazel,” she repeated, with minimal butchering of the syllables, “will take you...”

“Zoe,” I offered.

“Will take you, Zoe, to be my lawfully bedded—”

“Wedded!” her friends shrieked.

“Sorry!” She threw up her hands against her friends’ slapping. “Lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health—”

“—for richer or poorer!” her brunette friend threw in.

“—for better or for worse!” the blonde suggested.

“—come hell or high water,” the black-haired woman added, and her friends oooohed.

“That’s a good one,” the brunette said. “Oh, oh, add this one—to be your loving and faithful husband.”

“—from this day forward,” the blonde chimed in.

“—until death do us part,” the black-haired woman continued, pointing at the demon with her cocktail straw. “This is my vow.”

He raised a brow and faced me. His eyes held a lightning storm, his veneer of charm and primal attractiveness barely concealing the twitch of fury in his features. The women didn’t notice, but I sure did. I’d had the good luck of watching his face contort in anger all evening, and this was a new level of wrath. The air hummed with his restrained power, causing the outside space heaters to crackle.

“I, Azazel,” he began, his voice like rough-spun silk over my skin, “take thee, Zoe, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, come hell or high water—” his eyes flashed at the word hell “—to be your...loving and...faithful husband, until death do us part.” He paused, and a weight settled between us. “This is my vow.”

It hadn’t escaped me how he’d stumbled a bit over the loving and faithful part. I narrowed my eyes.

The women’s “awwwww” drew me back into the moment. I took a deep breath and swallowed. This was it. If I said my vow, I’d be shackled to this grouch for—would that be eternity? What kind of lifespan did demons have? Would I now live as long as him?

And there would be no going back. I was sure divorce was not an option for this particular union. What kind of life would await me? How much pain and misery?

My stomach turned. I had to gasp for air because the weight on my chest wouldn’t let me breathe deeply. Spots of light danced through my vision, I swayed and—

A large hand closed around my upper arm like a band of hot steel. I jerked and met the demon’s eyes, the connection so raw, so vibrant, it stripped me of anything but the awareness of his presence, his power. My lips formed the words before my brain caught up.

“I, Zoe, take thee, Azazel—” speaking his name intensified the fiery connection of our eyes “—to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, come—” I made a small sound of despair “—hell or high water, to be your loving and faithful wife, until death do us part.” My breath hitched on the last, fateful words. “This is my vow.”

Something snapped into place between us, hot and piercing, strong and supple, a tide of energy so fierce it would have knocked me off my feet if he hadn’t still held onto my left arm.

I couldn’t breathe.

His other hand took hold of my right shoulder, the contact searing, branding, while a storm raged in his eyes. Fine muscles ticked under the hard planes of his face, his cruel beauty like a blade, cold and cutting.

I was still choking on air.

“Now kiss!” The squeal came from somewhere to my right.

“Kiss, kiss, kiss!” The other women chanted.

I tried to draw in air. My lungs flat-out refused.

Dizziness crept in, the pounding of my heart a slowing drumbeat in my head. I fought it, but my eyelids slid down, my vision going dark—

The sizzling heat of his mouth on mine.

My eyes flew open. My lips parted without my doing, and his breath rushed into me. A firebrand, all the way down to my soul. My lungs started working with a jerk, I grabbed his shirt—my fingers finding purchase somewhere between armored plates—and held onto him for dear life.

He growled into my mouth, a sound as sensual as it was threatening, and then he licked over my lips, slipped his tongue between and touched mine.

And I was done for. The shudder that wrecked me was embarrassingly close to an orgasm. My entire body was abuzz with arousal.

I gasped as he let go and stepped back, keeping one hand on my shoulder to steady me.

“Woohoo!” The women hollered.

“Now that’s a kiss!”

“God, I wish someone would lay one like that on me…”

The others sighed in assent.

“Y’all are so cute,” the blonde said, a dreamy expression on her face.

I focused on her and the others, anything to avoid looking back at the demon who had just shortcircuited my system. My thoughts were still ajumble, and I refused to unjumble them.

Her brunette friend raised her glass. “To the happy couple!”

The other two joined in the toast.

“May you always cherish and love each other,” the black-haired woman slurred.

“May your marriage be full of joy and the right kind of excitement.” The blonde grinned.

“May God bless you and the home you build together,” the brunette said.

The black-haired woman leaned forward and held up a finger. “And may you never lie, cheat, or steal. But if you must lie, lie with each other. And if you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must steal, steal each other’s hearts, every day anew.”

Her friends gasped. “That’s a good one!”

“Right? It was in this movie with…”

I didn’t hear the rest of it because my entire awareness zeroed in on the male presence right next to me. He wasn’t touching me anymore, but he might as well have been. His energy was palpable, a tangible force that hovered so close, I expected to feel the physical touch of it any second. And that thing between us, the power that had snapped taut like a rope as soon as I’d spoken my vows, it hummed like an electric field, making the hairs on my arms rise.

“Ladies,” the demon purred, and it took all of me not to purr back, dammit. “Thank you so much for your assistance. You have truly made our night, but I’m afraid we must be going now. Big day tomorrow.”

I chanced a sideways glance at him and almost melted on the spot. He positively glowed with an inner fire, alluring, mesmerizing, his expression full of self-assured satisfaction. He exuded the quiet, confident power of a man fully in control of himself and in charge of the situation, a magnetic combination that was sure to attract any woman’s—and man’s—attention nearby.

And something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

Somewhere in the back of my head rang a warning bell, some hindbrain part of my consciousness raising the alarm.

The women virtually fawned over him as he said our goodbyes. I had the distinct impression that if he’d winked at them, he would have sent them sliding off their chairs.

“Come.” His hand pressed into my lower back, and goosebumps broke out over my arms. “Let’s go home.”

It hit me then.

That warning bell...it was the realization that the tables had turned.

Up until this point, I’d had a modicum of power. All the things I’d managed to make him do, like letting the priest go, finding someone drunk to witness, treating me with an illusion of respect, they’d only been possible because I’d had leverage. As long as I could still break the covenant and damn him and me to the consequences—consequences he wanted to avoid at all costs—I’d held a bargaining position. It hadn’t fully leveled the playing field, but it had given me some semblance of power when facing him.

That sliver of power was now gone.

He’d gotten what he wanted. I’d agreed to the marriage, and by doing so, I’d given up the only piece of leverage I’d had. He basically owned me now. He had no more incentive to treat me well, or even with an iota of civility. The covenant probably spelled out that he couldn’t kill me—probably—but other than that? He could very well be free to do whatever he wanted with me.

And given how much I’d aggravated him all night, the likelihood of me ending up roasting above a pit of hellfire for the next hundred years now loomed over me in stark contrast to the bravado I’d sported earlier.

Shit, shit, shit.

I knew one day my mouth would get me in trouble. Of course, I’d thought it would be the kind of trouble like saying the wrong thing to a cop during a traffic stop or something. Not putting me at the mercy of a demon with a cruel glint in his eye.

I hadn’t noticed how we’d walked away from the bar, had rounded the corner into a smaller street. Out of sight of the bar’s patrons and the occasional passerby on the larger street, the demon let his hand fall away from my lower back and turned to me.

I would not squeak. I would not squeak.

Not meeting his gaze, I shifted on my feet. His energy vibrated over my skin, pulled on the thing between us. My breath seemed to echo in the narrow street, the night far too quiet for a city this large.

A rustling sound startled me a second before my eyes caught the explosion of flame-licked feathers in my periphery.

I squeaked and darted back.

The demon’s wings rose behind his back, caressed by fire, a thing of primal beauty. He spread them once, the tips almost brushing the buildings’ walls on either side, and then shook them before resting them in a half-folded position.

He closed the distance to me, grabbed my waist when I wanted to scoot away again. “Hold on.”

“What?”

“Do you want to be a human pancake?”

I stared at him in confusion.

“That’s what will happen if you let go.”

With those words, he stepped even closer and hefted me up with one arm under my knees, the other around my back. Instinctively, I slung my arms around his neck, my heart pounding.

I had a second of thinking, Good God, he’s going to fly, and then he lifted off.

Air rushed around me, the wind whipped my hair into my eyes, and I didn’t dare loosen one hand from my death grip at his neck to clear my vision. All I saw were glimpses of lights spreading somewhere beneath us, a half-clouded sky that was way too close, and slivers of flame dancing over onyx feathers. The thump of his wing beats drowned out the whoosh of air.

He banked, and my stomach rolled over. I screamed.

“Quit that,” he growled.

Excuse the fuck out of me for shrieking in your ear when you’re flying in loops worse than the most terrorizing rollercoaster I’ve ever been on.That’s what I wanted to snap back at him. Of course, all I got out was another panicked scream.

The demon made a sound between disgust and frustration, and when he banked again and the next helpless shriek wanted to claw its way out of my throat—it got stuck. The sound wouldn’t come out.

My guts roiled, nausea crawled up into my mouth, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get a sound out.

That bastard had done something to my vocal cords.

My hands were in the perfect position to close around his throat and squeeze, and for a second there, I considered it. But, alas, my sense of self-preservation won out. Trying to strangle the guy who held me a thousand feet in the air would have topped any Stupidest Thing I Ever Did list.

I settled for cursing him silently.

With the next swoop, the wind and flight movement pushed my head against his shoulder, and my face landed in the curve of his neck. The skin-to-skin contact jolted me, a sizzling connection I felt all the way down to my toes. His wing beats became irregular for a second, and his arms flexed around me.

So close, I had no choice but to inhale his scent—leather, bonfire, and something invigorating, some sort of spice. My lips parted against his skin, and—involuntarily, as if in trance—I slid out my tongue and tasted him.

His flight pattern faltered. We dropped, and my stomach rose to meet my throat. I wrenched my mouth away from his skin. Closing my eyes, I let my mortification heat all the parts of my body that had grown cold and numb from the chill in the air.

I had just licked him.

Licked. Him.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“Other parts of my body,” he murmured in my ear, his voice humming with barely concealed mockery, “are even more delicious, if you’re hungry.”

Ugh. That smug ass. I so wanted to shoot him a snarky reply, but—oh yeah, my vocal cords were still disabled thanks to His Douchery. Also, I wasn’t sure anything would have gotten past the embarrassment currently making my heart pound so loud it drowned out the wind.

He banked once more, and this time the lights in my peripheral vision moved closer. My stomach confirmed we were in a landing maneuver. His wings beat the air in more forceful strides, slowing our descent. I held on all the tighter, lest I drop the last few hundred feet.

He landed in a fluid, graceful motion that seemed impossible given his size and the impetus he still had from his flight. Loosening his arms from around me, he let me slide down his front. He probably intended for my feet to hit the floor, which totally would have happened, had I not kept my death grip around his neck. As it was, I sort of dangled there, having come full circle to be the grotesque piece of human jewelry I’d quipped about earlier.

I didn’t do it on purpose. I just couldn’t pry my fingers apart. Somewhere between the cold from the flight and my terror of falling, my muscles had locked in this position.

“You can let go.” His voice rumbled against my cheek, which was pressed against his chest.

I cleared my throat. Oh, look, my vocal cords were back! “Yeah. Um. I can’t.”

“Getting attached so quickly?”

Arrogant jerk.

With a sigh of suffering patience, he reached behind his neck and dislodged my fingers. I stumbled to the ground in a graceless thump.

My fingers touched grass and dirt. I glanced around me. We were in some sort of park, lawn stretching out behind me, a cluster of trees in front. Lights shone in the distance, not strong enough to illuminate the darkness of this corner of the park.

“Where are we?” I scrambled to a stand, dusting myself off.

The demon had turned his back on me, his enormous wings half obscuring his body. “The gate in the East Bay.”

“Gate?”

“To Hell.”

I swallowed. On instinct, I scanned my surroundings, my gecko brain looking for an escape. Shit was getting real. This was it. After what I’d seen tonight, my mind didn’t even doubt the fact there was a gate to Hell here, and that once through it, I was well and truly fucked.

My pulse sped up, sweat broke out on my skin. Maybe I could—

“Don’t,” the demon said, his voice bored. He didn’t even bother to turn around, just kept on making weird gestures in the air.

Drawing, I realized. He was drawing signs. The symbols he wrote lit up for a second before fading again, and I squinted to make out what they looked like. Runes? Some version of ancient hieroglyphs? It was hard to tell.

With a start, I realized that if I really vanished through whatever portal to Hell in a minute, I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to my friends and family. Not that saying “goodbye” was a feasible idea to anyone who wasn’t in the know about what was actually happening here. The only person who’d understand was Taylor. I’d promised to call her when I was safe.

I almost laughed. Safe I was most definitely not. But I had to let her know, had to give her something.

I took out my phone, opened it to messages, and stared at the screen with the last texts we’d sent each other earlier today, when spending my birthday alone had been the biggest of my worries.

My throat knotted together.

Tay, I began. The priest didn’t work. He caught me. He’ll take me with him in a minute. If you don’t hear from me again…

I paused, my eyes burning.

...please know I love you. Thank you for being my friend.

I hit Send and immediately opened the messages to my mom. My text was simple, the only thing I could write, the only thing that mattered.

I love you.

She’d see it in the morning, and when she next tried to call me, she would only get my voicemail, or a disconnected signal. She’d wonder, worry, call again and again, call my work, where I hadn’t appeared, and then the horror of it would dawn on her. I imagined what losing me would do to her, and my heart broke, its shards piercing me in a million places.

A sob tore out of my throat. Through the tears clouding my vision, I saw the demon turn around, the blurry outlines of a doorway glowing behind him.

I pressed my hand over my mouth, tried to hold in the pain, but it escaped nonetheless, in the tears flowing hot over my cheeks, in the sobs wrecking my body.

“Stop that.” I couldn’t make out the demon’s features anymore, but his voice held an edge I hadn’t heard before.

My only answer was another wet sob.

His wings flared restlessly. He gestured at the doorway. “This won’t hurt you.”

“It’s not that,” I got out between gulps of air. Sniffling, I wiped at my cheeks, my breath stuttering. “I’ll never see them again.”

And they won’t ever see me again.That part was almost worse. Just the idea that I was going to be plucked out of this life, just disappeared like the victim in some gruesome true crime documentary, that my mom would be left wondering, hoping, searching for a clue because she didn’t even have the closure of my body being found… It would tear her apart.

And my dad—I pressed my fist against my mouth in an effort to stem the tangle of emotions associated with him, most of which I’d never dared to examine further. To say my relationship with him was rocky was the understatement of the century. I’d all but cut any contact to him, even though he’d tried, again and again over the years to make amends for his past mistakes. But some wounds just went too deep.

Or so I’d thought.

Now, faced with the prospect of truly never seeing him again… The sharp hurt in my chest seemed too much like regret.

“You can.” The demon’s voice pulled me out of my miserable thoughts.

“What?”

“See them again.” When I squinted at him through tear-clouded eyes, he went on, “You can visit.”

My heart stumbled over its own rhythm. I sniffled, blinked several times to clear my vision. “Really?” God, why did I sound so pathetic?

“Yes. Now stop...that.” He waved at my face.

I pulled a tissue out of my bag and blew my nose. The sound echoed uncomfortably loud in the silence of the park. My throat still raw, eyes burning with the aftermath of my crying, I followed his gesture when he beckoned me closer. The doorway shimmered behind him, an impossibility for the rational part of my mind, but given that one of the demon’s huge wings brushed my back, that rational part had pretty much called it a night.

I wished I could as well.

Sudden bone-deep weariness drenched me, pulled me down like a lead weight. I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and realize this had all been a weird dream. I didn’t want to fight with an overbearing demon who may or may not yet decide to torture me for his pleasure. I didn’t want to face whatever awaited me in Hell. Not to mention processing the trauma of being ripped from my familiar life.

My maudlin whinologue was interrupted by the demon unceremoniously picking me up as he’d done before. Immediately, I snaked my arms around his neck.

“Are we going to fly again?”

“In a minute.”

With that, he stepped up to the glowing doorway, and I had the ludicrous thought of how ironic it was that he was going to carry me over a threshold like a traditional bride.

I snickered.

The demon canted his head and peered down on me. “Something funny?”

“Nothing.” I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. “Carry on.”

And that did it. I burst out laughing.

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Humans” and continued walking.

I hid my face against his shoulder, still giggling. I was losing it. This time well and truly. One of my fuses must have snapped, and I had entered the phase of trauma response that made people act ridiculously, like laughing when their life went to shit right in front of their eyes.

In the periphery of my vision, the glow of the doorway was super close now. The demon took one more step, and the shimmer enfolded us.