Page 15 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

But what choice did she have? Telling Suyin the truth would be betraying Lily because it could endanger Mist, and Lily was the only person Iris was more loyal to than Suyin. It sucked, but it had to be done.

Which meant, Iris might have to consider leaving the coven.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a smile at her goth-queen, biker-ballerina best friend. “I gotta go.”

Suyin cocked a brow at Faust. “Have fun with your child.”

Back on the street, Iris and Lily walked in a heavy silence in the direction of their homes. It went without saying that the entire bank thing was a lie, and Lily didn’t bother asking about it. When they reached the point where their routes diverged, they stopped.

“Are you going to be okay with this?” Lily asked, searching her face. They stared at each other through the fur-lined hoods of their parkas.

Iris wasn’t surprised Lily knew exactly what she’d been thinking about. That was just how they worked.

She shrugged fake-casually. “Yeah.”

“I hate putting you in this position. The coven is your whole life.”

Lily’s green eyes were full of regret, and Iris couldn’t have that. She stretched out a hand and grabbed her sister’s shoulder.

Besides their matching eye color, they really looked nothing alike. Lily had wavy blond curls and a curvy body with a superabundance of boobs and ass. Iris was slender, barely needed a bra, and she’d been dying her hair every color under the sun for years.

“It’s fine, Lil. Don’t worry about me. You’re more important to me than the coven.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts. We can start our own coven, how about that? You can show me how you do your nightlight trick.”

When Lily’s power manifested, her entire body glowed with a sort of supernatural bioluminescence.

She had hid it for years when she’d been trying to deny her witch heritage, but when they’d gone to Hell to rescue Mist from his evil former mistress, it had ended up saving her life.

While they didn’t yet understand everything that power could do, Iris had seen Lily fight with Paimon, fall a long way down into a huge pit of monsters, and come out without a single scratch on her.

Lily made a face. “If I knew how to control it, I would. I’ve only managed to call on it at will once, and it barely lasted a minute. All the other times have been involuntary.”

“You’ll learn with time, and in the meantime, you can trust that it will manifest whenever you need it. Don’t pressure yourself. You defeated a Queen of Hell, and you should be proud.”

“ We defeated a Queen of Hell,” Lily said firmly. “Well, technically, the giant monster ate her, and we were just there for the show. But you do realize that I wasn’t able to activate that locked hellgate until you were touching me and our energies were linked?”

Iris scoffed, that stupid self-doubt rearing its ugly head.

She remembered the moment clearly, and she still felt she hadn’t really done anything.

Mist had put a lock on the hellgate sigil so they couldn’t follow him on his stupid suicide mission, but Lily had been determined to save him.

She’d shut her eyes and gone into a sort of trance, and her entire body had started glowing brightly.

Concerned, Iris had called out to her and grabbed her shoulders, trying to get her attention.

The next thing she knew, they were both standing on the other side of the hellgate—in Paimon’s lair in Hell. It should have been impossible to reactivate a locked gate like that, and yet, Lily had done it. Without her magic, Mist would be dead.

Iris shuddered at the memory of Hell and being terrified for their lives. It wasn’t something she liked to relive. “It was mostly you, though,” she reminded her twin. “Otherwise I would have been glowing too.”

“I’m not convinced. You’re more powerful than you think.”

Iris shrugged. She was starting to accept her role as the book-smart twin with no power. She was the supporting character in a movie. Lily was the lead. Yeah, it sucked, but Lily deserved the spotlight for once.

The birth of blood-born witches was rare, and blood-born twins were even rarer. Centuries ago, a seer had foretold Iris and Lily’s birth, claiming that the twins would be immortal, wield great power, and bring about the downfall of a King of Hell.

Either the seer had gotten a few things wrong, or their original predictions had been thoroughly mixed up as time passed, because the “King of Hell” they’d defeated had definitely been a Queen, and as far as Iris could tell, Lily was the only one with a remarkable power.

And last she’d checked, they were both very mortal.

Valefor hadn’t cared about the finer details of the prophecy, however. His only objective had been to find them and steal their supposed great power for himself through whatever horrific black magic ritual he could dream up. Sheolic magic was capable of some very alarming things.

“It doesn’t matter,” Iris said. “The point is, we can start meeting and practicing together. We don’t need the coven.”

Lily beamed at her. “I would like that. I want to get back into this stuff, I really do, I’ve just never felt that comfortable at Le Repaire. Suyin is, well, I know she’s your best friend, but she...”

“Freaks you out?”

Lily snorted. “Kinda, yeah. She’s just really intense. Does she ever relax?”

“Not really.” Iris chuckled. “I’ve seen grown-ass men cower beneath her stare. She’s a badass. But I know what you mean. She’s not for everyone.”

Iris’s phone rang the second she stepped in the door. Conveniently timed to increase the stress of taking off her snow boots and a parka with a hyper puppy stuffed in it, all while crammed in a four-by-four-foot entryway.

As Faust practically flung himself out of her arms and went scrambling down the hall in search of the cat, Iris whipped her phone out of her pocket. The call display told her it was Meph, and she answered before she could convince herself not to.

“I thought you were coming over,” he said.

“I’m not coming over. What gave you that impression?”

“Hm, maybe it was the part where you said, ‘I’ll be there soon.’”

“That was a fake conversation.” She kicked her boot off with a dramatic flourish, and it went flying into the wall and showered everything in snow.

After repeating the maneuver with the other foot, she closed the inside door to the entryway, leaving the snow to melt in peace and protecting her shoes from Faust’s raging chew addiction.

“Not for me it wasn’t. And frankly, it hurts that you think so.”

“I’m way too tired for this right now, Meph.”

“Fine. How about this? I want to make you come some more. First time with my fingers. Second time with my mouth. Third time with my cock. And the fourth and all times thereafter with a combination of the three.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, and silence reigned for several moments.

“What, was that too direct for you? I tried playing along with your whole ‘broke chick at the bank’ roleplay, but your imagined financial struggles really weren’t doing it for me.”

She laughed before she could stop herself and then closed her eyes. Why did she have to be so indescribably attracted to him? Of all the men—demons—whatever, why did she have to want this one so bad?

But she did. The truth was undeniable and evidenced by the fact that with a few simple sentences, he’d cranked up the dial on her sex drive to hyper speed.

She’d never wanted a dick more than she wanted his, and while that probably meant there was something clinically wrong with her. .. at this point, she was beyond help.

“Fine,” she said, relinquishing the last tether of self-control and good intentions. She was done fighting this. It was exhausting, and she was sick of it. “But you can come here. I’m not going to your dirty bachelor pad.”

“Still not keen to join the evil, demonic orgy?” he said, throwing her taunt from the second time they’d met back at her.

She winced. It was true she’d been a little irrational.

She’d showed up at the brothers’ apartment looking for Lily, and he’d invited her in for a drink.

And join your dirty demon orgy or whatever’s going on in there?

Hell no. In her defense, he’d been teasing her—typical—and she’d been worried about her sister.

He was a demon. What was she supposed to think?

“Do you want it or not?” she snapped to cover her embarrassment.

“Oh, I want it.”

“Then get your arse over here. And you’d better hurry up because if I have to wait too long, I’m starting without you.”

He had already hung up before she finished speaking.

Her phone buzzed with a text seconds later. I have no idea where you live.

Despite herself, Iris burst out laughing. She texted him her address and then ran to the bathroom to get ready.