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Her brain had not just put a demon in the same category as boyfriend. A demon couldn’t be a boyfriend, especially not a demon who insisted on being her boss for a job Gwen never wanted. Sex did not equal boyfriend material, either!
Gwen shook her head, sending a small scatter of water droplets to fly from the tips of her hair. The sensation of the wet strands against her neck and cheeks made her shiver.
This is bad.
Not just bad, butderanged. The urge to blame her exes on the whole ordeal was grating on her nerves. The lie couldn’t cover the fact that Gwen was attracted to him, or the fact that a part of herlikedhim. When he had just been a stuck-up antique dealer, Gwen had envied him. She wanted tobehim. Someone who freely expressed themselves in every manner of speaking. Ambrosius spoke his mind and cared little about hurting someone’s feelings.
And fuck, had he hurt her feelings more than once. But wasn’t it better to be honest than to lie? To bullshit through another conversation where nothing was actually said? Why not live honestly?
Because Ambrosius isn’t a person, he’s a demon. He can get away with that kind of talk, but if I told Tom to go fuck himself for staring at my breasts, I’d get fired.
No, Gwen couldn’t live like Ambrosius…
She frowned.
But couldn’t she? Gwen wasn’t a human any longer. Ambrosius had assured her of that multiple times. If she wasn’t human, why play by the same rules? Gwen wasn’t an expert when it came to reading or feeding on human emotions, but she had seen the potential advantages. Why worry about pissing someone off when Gwen could just subdue someone into exhausted compliance? Why play at any social norms when Gwen could just make up whatever ones she wanted?
The thought was heady. Powerful, even, and far too tempting. Was this what it meant to be a demon? As much as Ambrosius claimed to have no association with devils, Gwen couldn’t help but draw the comparison. He had tempted her—in more ways than one. The more Gwen thought about it, the more tempting the offer was.
Would it really be so bad if she just … gave in?
“No, no,no!” Gwen exclaimed. “You arenotgiving into that asshat.”
Gwen swore she would kick her own ass if she submitted to him. This had to be part of his plan, just like how he had planned to trick her. She couldn’t think of a more perfect way for a demon to seduce a human into complying. Show Gwen all the things she had always wanted, and make it very easy for her to lose. Gwen could picture his smug face as he counted inventory—or whatever it was demons did in antique stores—thinking he had won.
Not today, Satan,Gwen thought snidely as she swung the bathroom door open and stomped toward her bed.
No, the next time she saw him, Gwen needed to lay down the law. She may be a monster now, but Gwen wasn’t going to be a pushover. He couldn’t just boss her around like an underling, and they definitely could not, under any circumstances, have sex again—
“I’m starting to suspect you’re perpetually angry, my bittersweet.”
“JesusfuckingChrist!” Gwen whirled around, spying Ambrosius in the doorway of her bathroom. “Will youstopdoing that?!”
“No,” he said simply.
Gwen wanted to glare, but found her mouth going slightly slack at the sight of his bare arms. Ambrosius was wearing a vest top with a lapel collar and nothing underneath it. The ink that had teased her for days was suddenly on display. Her eyes trailed across the jagged spider, following the connecting design up his forearm. The ink was strange, almost like spider webbing, butoffsomehow. Like the cracks along broken pottery. The more Gwen eyed the ink, the stranger it became.Gwen could swear she could see shapes between the interconnecting lines.
Eyes …mouths…
“Gwen, my bittersweet, it’s rude to stare.”
An argument was right on the tip of her tongue when Gwen realized how close the demon was to her. Close enough that Gwen could see the skeletal form of a two-headed snake creeping up Ambrosius’ neck. The fangs of one of them bared toward Ambrosius’ jaw, while the other curved toward his Adam’s apple. Gwen could have sworn she hadn’t seen that before.
Gwen cleared her throat, meeting his near black stare and felt her mouth go dry. The hypocritical jackass waslookingat her, too. He was just doing it so damn slowly that Gwen hadn’t noticed his eyes trailing over her form. Now that she did, Gwen felt hot and suddenly self-conscious of the fact that she was only wearing a towel. She tried her hardest not to double check that it was securely attached, fingers curling slightly at her sides.
“What are you doing here?” Gwen asked.
“Why haven’t you finished the doll?” Ambrosius asked.
Gwen’s jaw tightened. Of course, he was here because of that. It wasn’t as if—
“Because I’m still figuring out how I feel about it.”
The unexpected admission caught her off guard. Gwen saw the advantages Ambrosius had given her. She had her own damn lie detector test built in, which meant navigating social interactions wouldn’t be as difficult as they had been. On the off chance it did get away from her, well, Gwen could just suck a person dry of the feeling. They’d get sleepy, and Gwen could fuck off into the distance, no questions asked.
“But we can talk about that later,” Gwen sighed. “We need to … to clear the air, okay?”
“Funny how you manage to avoid business so much,” Ambrosius snidely replied.