Chapter 29

29

H er back hits the windowsill, him rushing into her space, an inexorable force forward, clattering against the glass. The cold bites against her skin, where her shirt rides up and his blisteringly hot hand presses against her bare hip, a delicious contradiction of sensations.

The sort of contradiction she lives for.

She opens her lips to his, less of a welcome and more of a trap, and he takes it like he was born to. Both hands surge into her hair, twisting in her black strands, digging into her scalp, and she gasps against him.

Not in any pain, not in any distress, and he only uses it to press her deeper against the windowsill instead of pulling back.

Excellent.

Chloe lets him, let’s him push her more, instead using the distraction and the effort to grip him by the belt, snapping it open with a practiced click.

All college issued belts work the same, and he jerks in surprise at the actions, but she kisses him instead of breaking the contact, biting down on his lip.

He twists his hand tighter in her hair, almost to the point of pain, and her breath hitches in her throat.

“Oh, you want this,” he murmurs, his lips not leaving hers, and she swallows his words with her breath. “You actually want this.”

“Yes,” she whispers back, despite her heart pounding, despite the cold at her back, before she pulls off his belt in one decisive motion.

Now, she knows, in a remote sort of way, that this is different for demons. That the nerve endings are different, the experience is different, the emotions are different.

But the smolder in his eyes—his true eyes, not the ones in this too-pretty body—shows his want is just the same.

“You’re going to tell me if I do anything wrong,” Chloe orders, and his brows flash up. “I’ve never fucked a demon.”

“And I’ve never fucked a human,” he challenges right back, and the obscenity drips from his words, a threat and a promise.

“Good,” she whispers, and he pulls at the hem of her shirt, hitching it up until he curls his hand around her bare back, touching more of her skin, more of her.

She jerks back, tugging the shirt off completely, tossing the cheap material aside, and his eyes track down her front, like he can’t get enough of what he sees. Like he thinks this won’t last, that this’ll be his only chance to see, that he won’t be able to have this again.

The hand on her back spasms as his lips curl up into a smile.

“This is how you scryed me,” he murmurs, and she caused this smile, she gets to own it. “Stripped down to nothing but this, wide eyed and determined.” His voice dips down, almost to a growl. “And terrified.”

It’s not terror she’s feeling right now.

“It worked,” Chloe replies smugly. “I got my research back.”

Gentle, so gentle she almost aches, he places both hands on her ribcage, soft against the skin.

“I saw these scars, too,” he murmurs, running a thumb along the raised skin, along the strangely numb hypertrophic healing that still marks her. “And I immediately knew you were more than I thought.”

She shivers at his touch. “Well. You know. Toronto.”

He breaks into a grin, moving his to against her bare back, and all of Chloe longs to be touched like that, with that look on his face, with that desire in his eyes.

Oh, this could be fun.

His other hand comes to rest over the frankly purple bruise on her ribs.

“Now you,” he starts, low, “are going to speak up the moment I hurt this.”

“I can take it,” Chloe vows, her blood boiling for more touch, for more contact, for more of this, then, “trust me to tell you before you damage anything.”

It’s almost a plea.

He considers, tilting his head towards her, and it takes too long. Too long, too much thought, and—

He grips her by the hips, fingers digging in, and teleports her the short distance to the bed. Her back hits the same blanket they slept under, his pillow still dented, drawing a gasp from her.

His hand parts her thighs as he presses a kiss against her breastbone.

“Take off your pants,” he rasps, and she’s never done so quicker, her heart pounding with delicious anticipation, until she’s bare in front of him.

Bare, and his breath hitches as he leans back, taking her in. Mapping her out like a puzzle, like he’s forming an angle of attack.

“You too,” she interrupts, and his mind visibly skips, his eyes unfocusing.

She caught him off guard, and it’s delicious.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he all but growls, but he follows her order, his hands only shaking a little bit, the only trace of his normal fear.

And now she knows what that fear is for. And now she knows what pushes him towards this, towards the power.

But before she can formalize the thought, before she can let herself spiral into new directions, he trails his hand up the bare skin of her thigh, startling a shiver out of her.

“Whatever you’re thinking right now,” he murmurs, “stop.”

And she does.

Grabbing him, she pulls him down against her in a kiss, all skin against skin. This new body is unscarred except for a small mark on his lower abdomen, like before he died he had his appendix removed, and it’s somehow the only blemish on him. No bruises, no signs of the battle the day before, nothing.

She draws her nails up his back, and he shudders at the touch, before he captures her in another kiss, brutal. Pressing. Wanting.

Arching her back against him, he positions himself so deliberately, so wonderfully, and the head of his cock pushes against her opening.

She freezes, blinking up at him, and he does the same, for one long moment.

“Don’t you dare stop,” she whispers, pushing up at him, so he drags against her clit, sending sparks up her back. “Don’t you dare—”

Before she can finish the sentence, before she can even think, his hands close over her wrists, drawing them up over her head, pinning her down, and thrusts inside of her.

She gasps, her entire body clenching all at once, and he groans, low in the back of his throat. He’s big, much bigger than she would’ve thought, and it takes her breath away.

She’s not sure how dick size would change with a new body, but she has no complaints about this one as she shifts against him, almost unable to breathe.

And he holds her down, pinning her wrists, as she squirms to get used to his size, to the sudden invasion.

She could escape.

It hits her, as she breathes through the stretch of him, of that crystal point between pleasure and pain, and she could get out. Could easily extract her wrists from his grip, easily leave. She’s not trapped, she’s not helpless.

She’s just being held.

The air escapes her all in a whoosh, and she relaxes into his grip, drawing a low sound from him, like he’s the one coming to realizations. His fingers spasm against her wrists, like the single point of contact there is keeping him in place instead of her. That the holding is for him, not her, that he’s the one desperately clawing to control of himself by pinning her there.

She clenches around him, and he inhales, sudden, his eyes wild.

“You okay?” she asks, and her voice comes from her high, uncontrolled.

He doesn’t answer, just thrusts inside of her, one strong move again, drawing another gasp from her.

“You,” he starts, almost in a growl, “feel so fucking good.”

He thrusts against her again, starting a brutal pace, sliding between the point of brutality and pleasure with each stroke. Her mind blanks out of all the witty responses, of all the romantic things she usually tries to wring out of her partners. All that remains is the heat between her thighs, his weight above her, and the pleasure blooming inside.

After, he pries his fingers from her wrists and throws his arm around her, pulling her against his chest as he all but collapses onto the bed next to her.

All of her nerves still alight, Chloe rests her head in the crook of his shoulder, breathing harder than she would care to admit. There’s a thin sheen of sweat against his skin—she didn’t know demons could sweat—and her ribs pang, just a bit.

Not enough to stop her, she wouldn’t shift away from this for all the money in the world, but just a bit.

This close, she can see his pulse fluttering against his skin, his actual skin. See the beating heart of his demon self, ever shifting.

For a few long minutes they cuddle like this, the peace almost fragile above them, like speaking would shatter it into a million pieces, before a sigh rumbles through his chest and he tugs her in a bit tighter.

“I have heard…” he starts, before falling short, burying his face into her hair, but she just waits for him to speak again, to finish what he began. “Other demons have said that the sensation’s muted with humans. Except Necromancers.”

That goes roughly in line with what Chloe’s heard from Melekai.

“You weren’t muted,” he finishes, and she can feel his words more than hear them. “Nothing about you was muted.”

In the dim light, he’s beautiful.

And she doesn’t mean the guard’s face, but the rougher underneath, with the same almost-wrinkles around his eyes and the cut of his jaw.

It wells up in her heart, striking a similar cord of terror.

“Killian,” she asks, almost hating herself for speaking, the words bubbling up out of her. “What are you planning on doing with the spirit fox?”

He blinks at her, lashes casting shadows over his cheeks.

“I need to know,” Chloe says desperately. “I need to know if you’re going to hurt her.”

He props himself up on his elbows, and it’s such a human action that it hurts her heart, but his face is serious.

He’s taking her seriously.

He regards her for a long second, and she refuses to shrink back down. Refuses to feel guilty for the question, refuses to retract it for the sake of peace.

“She’s going to protect her,” Killian says, with a nod towards the other room, despite the fact that the pre-teen is safe over at her friend’s house. “I will tie her power to Seanna, so Seanna will always be safe.”

Chloe exhales, her heart still pounding.

“If I do it right, the spirit fox will be unharmed,” he says, and it’s almost close to a vow. “She will be a guardian, a companion, ever watching over Seanna, and no one will dare hurt her.”

Chloe swallows down the rush of emotion, the unnamed lump in her throat.

Killian reaches out a single finger, tracing a line down her arm, close to the still healing cut from the demon in the cage.

And Chloe has to wrestle with her ideas. Her want to set the fox free, to run wild, do whatever she wants, with the need to see her friend safe. To see her happy, content.

It’s something she’s wrestled with for the years of their separation.

Chloe ducks her head back down against the sheets, against the pillow that’s creased from her weight.

He’s waiting for an answer from her, to a question he hasn’t quite asked.

“Can we make sure she’s happy?” Chloe asks, her voice a bit trembly. “I don’t want her…I don’t want her to be enslaved, I don’t want her drained, I don’t want her captive, I don’t…”

He hmms in the back of his throat, not cutting her off, but she lets her voice trail into silence anyways. He’s calculating, something in his gaze is far away, like he’s running equations and working the probability of something.

She’s seen the same expression across Ambra’s face, when she thinks Gurlien might be doing something dangerous. She’s seen it on Maison’s face, when Delina attempts something, and he thinks nobody can see him. She’s seen it flicker across Terese’s eyes before she agrees to anything.

“I hadn’t…considered…the happiness of the spirit fox,” he says, his voice as gentle as his hands. “It would…” His eyes flicker up to hers, reflecting the meager light back at her, and it’s immediately almost soothing. “Can you help me with it? The happiness?”

Chloe exhales as slow as she can, hope prickling in her chest. “Yes,” she breathes, and there are tears trembling in the corners of her eyes, completely unbidden. “Yes, absolutely.”

He rubs his thumb across her wrist, watching the thin skin there, where it moves over her bones. “Then yes,” he whispers, like he too can’t believe what he’s saying. “I will do whatever I can for happiness.”

They doze together, entwined, until the sun almost begins to set, the sun turning the snow outside a pastel pink and bruised purple, and Chloe almost feels peace.