Page 7 of Demon Next Door

“What the hell, David?” Kenny said, lowering his hand from where he’d lifted it to knock again. He craned his neck. “Do you—are you doing that stupid magic bullshit again? Are you trying to summon a heating pad or something?”

Beside him, Scotty chortled, grinning to show off his unnaturally even teeth. He held up a bundle of fabric wrapped in an electrical cord. “I guess it worked!” he said. “You okay, dude? You’re not wearing pants. Usually people put on pants to open the door.”

“You don’t always put on pants,” Kenny said, looking at Scotty. “Sometimes you wear your briefs. It’s hot. But yeah, David should totally wear pants.”

They both turned back to me—slowly, because they had too much muscle in their necks to be able to rotate their heads without some effort.

They looked like someone had Photoshopped one single model into two similar guys for a cheapo gym advertisement: identical haircuts, identical sweatpants and moisture-wicking-tank combos.

I stared at them in disbelief, irritation warring with humiliation. I’d spent a year sucking Kenny’s cock while he went off and flirted with Scotty, and now they showed up on my doorstep to take contemptuous pot-shots at my half-clothed body?

The fucking nerve of it! I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around myself to hide whatever I could.

A faint cracking sound echoed from inside the apartment, like an almost infinitely distant bolt of lightning.

Or maybe even a door shutting firmly, for good this time.

Kenny’s eyes narrowed. “You got someone else here, David?”

Footsteps. There were footsteps behind me, heavy and measured. My heart kicked into overdrive, vibrating down to my bare toes.

I couldn’t turn around. If I turned, and no one was there, I’d die of disappointment, and I’d also look like a fucking idiot. Besides, shock and hope had frozen me in place, paralyzed and with my fingers clenched so hard around the edge of the door I might break them if I tried to move.

A second later, an already-familiar spicy warmth enveloped me, my back heating, my blood pressure lowering.

Even if I hadn’t felt him, I’d have known he was there by the identical expressions of horror, terror, and overwhelming lust on Scotty and Kenny’s faces.

“Oh, shit,” Scotty breathed. “Fuck. This dude is—where do you work out?” He reached down and adjusted himself through his sweatpants, with no shame at all. For fuck’s sake! And they were on me for not wearing pants at all? Why even bother?

“David?” Kenny demanded, his voice going up a whole octave and his eyes huge and round, with the whites showing on all sides. He fell back a step. “How do you—are you—were you cheating on me ?”

Was I— “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” I sputtered.

“Cheating on you? Hello! You were cheating on me for probably the whole time we were together! And you brought him here! With—with—my heating pad!” I finished, a bit anticlimactically, but seriously, Scotty was holding my heating pad like it was his to give, the asshole!

I might even have lunged forward, either to grab the heating pad or bitch-slap Kenny, if Xan hadn’t wrapped one demonically strong and muscular arm around my waist and yanked me back against his body.

“I work out by lifting puny little weaklings like you with one hand and flinging you twenty feet up, screaming, to be plucked out of the air and devoured by flying scaled flame-beasts,” Xan said.

“And then on my days off, I stay in condition by pleasuring my beautiful David in ways you can’t even imagine.

If you ever come back, I’ll rip you limb from limb before I have my morning coffee. Are we clear?”

Kenny’s eyes bulged, and he let out a little, high-pitched, “Uhhhh—uhh,” kind of sound, going pale under his fake tan.

Scotty just stared, but the bulge in his sweatpants got so much bigger. Ewww. I mean, okay, yes.

I was hard too, because I could easily picture Xan flinging them both into the maws of flame-beasts and then pleasuring me in ways they couldn’t imagine, and I suddenly wanted to get on my knees, far more eagerly than I ever had for Kenny, and show Xan what I could do to all those curving ridges on his cock with my sweet, soft human tongue.

So I got it, I really did.

But still. Ewww.

“Your—your pecs,” Scotty stammered. “They’re—how? How many reps do you do? What do you bench-press? Tell me what you press!”

“Go away,” Xan said. “I need to be alone with David. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to get it up if I look at you much longer.”

And with that, he tugged me backward through the door and slammed it in Kenny and Scotty’s gaping faces.

“Wait,” I said stupidly. “My heating pad!”

Xan spun me around and backed me up against the door, leaning down, bracing his arms to either side of me.

His eyes blazed, a shade of brilliant vermilion that matched his hair.

No wonder Kenny had been so scared. Demons weren’t unknown in the human world, but they weren’t exactly common, either.

And they were way more intimidating up close.

My urge to get on my knees increased exponentially.

“Do you have any use case for a heating pad that I can’t fulfill?

” Xan asked. “I doubt it, but if you do, I’ll buy you another one.

Forget the heating pad. You didn’t ask me to stay last night.

Did you summon me again on purpose? Or did you—if this is some kind of mistake, tell me now before I make a fool of myself. ”

I stared up at him. “Mistake?” I could finally breathe again, now that he was here.

His scent and the glint of his fangs as he spoke, and that low, soothing growl of his voice…

in less than a day, they’d become familiar.

Necessary. Maybe it wasn’t only my teenage self that’d been capable of falling hard for a demon if given half a chance.

“My only mistake was not understanding that it was a, a magic thing, not a politeness thing. I’m so sorry, Xan.

Of course I wanted you to stay. Waking up without you was—”

“Awful,” he said, and swooped down and kissed me.

We hadn’t kissed last night. I hadn’t really missed it, because honestly everything else he’d done to and with me had been overwhelming enough.

How the hell had I not missed it? Gods, he kissed like a—well, like a demon. Hard and fierce, forked tongue tasting and exploring me, hot and agile. His lips were so firm, demanding my obedience to his will.

And his hands on my waist, where they’d landed when he took my mouth, were so gentle. So coaxing, with his thumbs settling into the little dips by my hipbones and his fingers caressing the generous curves of my ass.

Xan lifted his head after one more tiny nip to my lower lip. His eyes still glowed, but they’d settled into a softer color and luminescence. Would I come to know every nuance of his eyes? I hoped so.

He smiled, and I smiled, and he gripped me a little tighter around the waist, and I bit my lip, almost unbearably shy all of a sudden, glancing up at him through my lashes.

“So,” he rumbled. “What now?”

“Um,” I said. “I need to blow out those candles before I burn the place down. And—okay, first things first. I want you to stay. I am asking, telling, and demanding that you stay. Also, I need to go to work later so I don’t lose my job, shit.

And. And I really want to suck your cock,” I finished in a rush.

A slow, wicked smile spread across Xan’s face.

He had a dimple in his cheek. Oh, fucking gods help me, my giant, terrifying demon had a dimple . The sound I made was pure, helpless surrender, and my knees went so weak I’d have fallen if I wasn’t up against the door with Xan holding me.

“We can make that happen,” he said. “If I go to work with you and help, do we have time first for me to get my cock sucked and also see how many inches of my tongue I can fit up your ass? I didn’t do my best work last night. I was in too much of a hurry to fuck you.”

It wasn’t only my knees. My whole body was going to melt into goo.

“Oh,” I gasped. “Yes. How many inches of tongue do you even have?”

“However many you want,” he said. “I already told you that.” And he kissed me again, pulling me away from the door and toward my bedroom. “Whatever’s going to make you happy.”

It was my turn to stretch up on my toes and kiss him. “I’m pretty sure that’s you,” I whispered.

And that was how I learned how Xan’s eyes glowed when he was happy.

I saw it a lot from then on. And every time, it made me smile. Just for him.

The End

*****

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