Page 6 of Demon Next Door

When I blinked my eyes open slowly, morning sunlight was streaming in through the gap left by the broken slat of my bedroom’s Venetian blinds. At its current angle, the sunbeam perfectly illuminated Sean Bean’s sexy but judgy frown.

Autumn days in California might not be all that cold, but the early mornings could be miserably chilly before the fog burned off. I blinked again, shivered, and tried to pull the blankets all the way around me.

Because Xan wasn’t there.

I flailed my way onto my back, somehow getting tangled up in the same blankets that weren’t even all the way over me, and let out a whimper as all my muscles seized up at once.

Gods, I hadn’t been worked, or worked over, like that in…ever.

I turned my head. Sean Bean still glowered at me.

Maybe he was judging me for getting fucked unconscious by a demon.

Or no, that didn’t seem like his style, not that I knew the guy.

He was probably judging me for waking up alone, the demon having decided I might be good for a few hours but not more than that.

The familiar sense of self-loathing got its claws in me, my gut churning. I’d never been good enough for anyone: not attractive enough, not interesting enough, not muscular or masculine or outgoing enough.

A familiar prickling sting at the corners of my eyes made me glad no one was there but Sean after all. What if Xan had seen me cry? What would he think of me then?

Except that…he had seen me cry. Probably a bunch of times, because I hadn’t exactly been in control of my emotions in my teens. Okay, or since then, but whatever. Particularly in my teens. He’d watched me. For years .

He’d seen me trying to fuck myself on that improbably large dildo—which had been, in fact, one of the many things that’d made me cry.

Damn it. My hands flew up to cover my face, as if I could somehow retroactively hide from him.

Xan had told me he’d imagined it was him.

I’ve waited a long time for this.

He’d been lonely too, maybe. He must’ve been, or he wouldn’t have been hanging around watching a human in another dimension living his mundane daily life instead of going out and living his own.

Maybe whatever teenage demons did to get ready for being a death-challenging grown-up didn’t appeal to him all that much. Or maybe…

Maybe he’d genuinely liked me.

If he’d liked me so much, waited years for me to get my act together and summon him effectively at last, why had he left as soon as I fell asleep, though?

Why wasn’t he here disapproving of the way I didn’t have anything to eat for breakfast—because my grocery shopping skills sucked when I was buying food at least as much as when I bought spell components—or simply skipping breakfast and fucking me again?

Shit.

I pulled my hands away and stared up at the ceiling in horrified realization.

Tell me you want me to stay .

Had I answered him? Told him yes, definitely, make himself at home? No. I hadn’t. I’d mumbled something that sounded encouraging and kissed his arm.

For a human, that would’ve been plenty. If I’d been in his place, I’d have been pretty confident that the guy I was sleeping with wanted me to stick around.

But for a demon? Who’d been summoned to this dimension with magic I didn’t even understand—obviously, or I’d have made it work a decade ago?

The rules were different.

He’d clearly known that. Xan had asked me to ask him to stay, and I’d been too fucking out of it to understand.

I kicked myself free of the last of the bedding that’d tied itself around my legs, and I rolled out of bed and staggered for the bathroom.

First things first. I’d take care of my immediate bodily needs, because you couldn’t fucking think straight with a full bladder.

A quick shower would be a good idea, too, because I had Xan’s come leaking out of me and my own all over me, and I might need to run to the store for new spell components.

Damn it, I was going to summon him back here if it was the last fucking thing I ever did. Even if I had to buy every can of menudo in town and pawn my laptop so I could afford the fancy smoked cayenne pepper.

The shower left me with more clarity than I’d had in months.

Or at least it felt that way. Maybe it was the complete, total lack of anything resembling a migraine.

No pain, no dizziness or vertigo, no nausea.

My ass ached—more than my ass. Internal parts of my body I didn’t think you were supposed to be conscious of ached, too, still feeling the imprint of that massive cock.

When I dried myself off, bending over made me wince.

And the muscles of my arms and legs and back all protested.

But those were good pains, the remnants of pleasure. And my mind’s gears turned smoothly, for once. I hadn’t even realized what a fog of constant neurological misery I’d been in until it suddenly lifted.

It’d worked. My plan had worked. For the moment, at least, I was cured, though I’d have to wait a few hours to see if the orange logos came back on schedule.

And yet it wasn’t good enough. I wanted Xan. A little glimpse of happiness had made me greedy for more. I didn’t know him very well—not yet. But I wanted to.

Xan…he’d watched me, waited for me, for years. Me . How could I resist that? He could’ve been kind of awful and I’d still have been flattered. But instead, he was the hottest guy, in all ways, I’d ever met. Kind and thoughtful. Extraordinary in bed. He liked me. He wanted to make me smile.

I’d used to think a shared taste in movies, stuff like that, made you compatible with a boyfriend.

Yeah. That had gotten me Kenny. And the guy before that, who’d only lasted two months, and whom I’d thought was the one for the first few weeks because we both hated avocados and dreamed of traveling to Iceland.

But that crap didn’t matter compared to the way Xan made me feel. In only a few short hours he’d had me excited, relaxed, drenched in pleasure, comfortable in my own skin.

And apparently I made him laugh.

Which meant we could find a compromise on what movies we watched on date night and where we went on vacation, and take the rest of it from there.

So I was getting ahead of myself. Whatever. We should at least be able to go on a real date, right? And to do that, I had to summon a demon like I’d never summoned before. Open that door all the way and break it off its hinges.

Maybe I should’ve waited to stride purposefully into the kitchen until I’d finished pulling up a fresh pair of boxers, but damn it, I wanted Xan back now .

I tripped over my own feet and slammed into the table, sending the spices and candles flying, my phone spinning off the edge and landing on the floor.

It lit up and started flashing, and I peered down at it.

Three texts and a missed call from Kenny.

Yesterday that would’ve meant something to me.

Today, I simply didn’t care. I totally ignored the buzz of the phone as another text from Kenny came in, gathering up the spell components and carrying them carefully into the living room.

I’d do it as right as I could, and if it didn’t work, I’d make a trip to the store and buy new everything after all.

The living room boasted a scratched-up but genuine hardwood floor, one of the big selling points of the apartment, and I laid everything out there.

Some more rummaging in the bathroom cabinet got me a slightly better set of sandalwood-scented candles that I’d forgotten someone had given me for my birthday last year, and that made the whole setup a bit less amateurish—as long as you squinted enough so you couldn’t see the canned goods.

Everything else I left more or less the same, except…

it made me blush so hot you could’ve heated the soup on my face, but I made a little addition to the salt and honey bowl.

Xan’s reaction, combined with my new understanding of the spell’s purpose, plus a little more thought in general, had given me a big fat fucking clue about what the text meant by “the supplicant’s sweet salt.

” Jerking off into the bowl would be unacceptably gross, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to masturbate over a can of smoked oysters, anyway.

But thinking about Xan had gotten me half hard, and the tip of my cock was damp with a hint of precome.

I slipped my hand inside my boxers and gathered up that bit of moisture, running my fingertip around the rim of the bowl.

There. That would have to do.

Gods, I needed this to work right now . In large part, it was because I kept thinking about Xan, banished back home to his death challenges and thinking I hadn’t cared enough about him to want him to stay.

But also—if it didn’t work, I’d be spending my afternoon trying to come in a bowl while staring down a pulsating oyster. A death challenge might be easier.

I lit the candles, took a deep breath, and recited the spell, picturing Xan’s smile and imagining the heat of his touch.

The last words of the spell faded into nothingness.

And again, absolutely nothing happened. No pulsations of any kind. No tall, gorgeous demons.

I stared down at the crumbled bits of basil, my vision blurring with gathering tears. Gods, the best thing that’d ever come my way, and I’d fucked it up. Of course I had. Maybe Xan was watching me now, trying to pry that door the rest of the way open, uselessly calling my name, as unhappy as I was.

That made it so much fucking worse.

A heavy knock sounded on the door.

I jumped up so fast I nearly fell into the middle of the spell, but I righted myself at the last second and windmilled my way to the door, flinging it open with a smile on my lips and my heart lifting and—there were two men at my door. Both of them heavily muscled, both of them taller than me.

Neither was Xan.