Page 32 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

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I RIS SAT ALONE ON THE BED WITH HER KNEES AGAINST HER chest. She was gulping in air almost as uselessly as Meph had been and blinking hard to keep the moisture in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.

If she let herself cry, it would feel too close to admitting she wasn’t quite as emotionless as she pretended to be, wished she was.

She kept seeing Meph’s face in her mind—his red eyes wide and staring at her in horror. And then came the memories of how he’d flinched when she shut him down.

That’s too bad , she heard herself say in that awful, dead voice. I was really enjoying our arrangement.

Flinch.

Shame it has to end.

Flinch.

That flash of hurt in his gaze... Her breath hitched, her throat constricted so tight she couldn’t swallow, and a tear managed to escape down her face. She quickly swiped it away.

Either she was a stone-cold bitch or she wasn’t. If she was going to reject Meph, she needed to own it. Embrace it. Feel nothing. Not sit there and cry about it.

She started to get angry. Fuck him. She’d made it very clear from the beginning that this was not about feelings and that the moment either of them felt them, it was over. He had agreed. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

I have... feelings. For you.

She pictured him hunched over, gasping for breath.

He was so screwed up, he had a straight-up panic attack because he didn’t know how to process emotions properly.

And then she’d knifed him in the back. She hadn’t just shut him down.

She’d taken the little flower buds of his fragile emotions and crushed them into oblivion.

“Fuck!” she shouted to her empty bedroom.

Why was she like this? Why did she nurture such a scathing personality that no one could stand to be around her? And why did she insist on pushing away the only people who could?

She knew she was rude. She knew she was too blunt. She knew she got mad too quickly and her stubbornness made people roll their eyes when they thought she wasn’t looking. She knew it, but she didn’t change it. No, she reveled in it.

It wasn’t like she meant to torture herself. No one wanted to be the unlikeable, difficult person. Yet she went to great lengths to ensure she filled that role, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

This whole thing was Meph’s fault, she reminded herself when the guilt threatened to choke her again. He was the one who’d broken their bargain. He was the one who’d made it complicated. She’d been clear about her intentions, and he had chosen to ignore them. She owed him nothing.

And yet, those assurances did nothing to console her. No matter what justifications she made, there was no hiding from the cold, hard truth:

Once again, she’d crossed a line. She’d hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.

Fuck the fact that he was a demon. She’d been so hung up on it in the beginning, always reminding herself what he was whenever she had any positive thoughts about him.

Whenever he did something to impress her or make her laugh.

She’d put him on trial from their first interaction solely because of what he was.

She was pretty sure that was called prejudice .

Yeah, she had a good reason to be distrustful of demons. It flashed in her mind’s eye every time she went to sleep at night. The fire. The screaming. Her screaming, as she saw the flames and knew her parents were trapped.

Her mam had sent her to the store on a nonsensical errand, making her vow with blood magic that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t enter the building until she was told it was okay.

Iris had fought her, had argued adamantly and demanded an explanation, but in the end, she was an eighteen-year-old girl who listened to her parents, and she’d given in.

And when she returned, she’d been forced to stand helplessly and watch Valefor’s fire take down the building with the coven inside.

So yeah, she had a good reason to hate demons, but at a certain point, she had to get over herself. Meph and his brothers had proven they weren’t like Valefor. They were trying to be better.

She told Lily she’d accepted that, but had she really? She was so ready to accuse Meph of anything, so quick to throw him out the door when he softened toward her for a split second. Would she have been so cruel to him had he been human?

“Oh god,” she murmured against her palms as the image of his tortured face flashed through her mind.

The first feelings he’d probably ever had for anyone had been for her. And she’d had to go and ruin them immediately because feelings repulsed her.

Or maybe this had nothing to do with Meph’s feelings at all and everything to do with her own guilt and self-hatred. Maybe this was more about her intrinsic belief that she didn’t deserve to have good things because she wasn’t a good person.

Under all Iris’s bluster and abrasiveness, there was a girl that wished she’d been strong enough to fight the blood vow and save her parents.

There was a girl that hated herself for standing there, incapable of action while they died.

There was a girl that couldn’t fathom why she got to live while they did not.

Survivor’s guilt. She knew it was a thing. The therapist she’d seen for the first few years after the fire had told her as much. But while therapy had given her some handy terms to identify her thought patterns, it hadn’t solved her problems for her.

At the end of the day, Iris had to learn to live with herself. She had to live with the fact that her parents had sacrificed their lives to keep her and Lily safe. She had to live with the fact that she had lied to her sister about the most defining moment of their lives for nearly a decade.

And now, she had to live with the fact that she had hurt someone who’d become important to her. Someone she cared about. Someone who cared about her too. Someone who stood up for her, who had her back, who made her life better in every way.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Why was she like this?

At that moment, she was glad she was facing away from the mirror on the wall, because if she’d seen herself, she would have punched it until the glass shattered.

Faust peeked around the door, which had been left ajar from Meph’s hasty departure. The hound’s head cocked, and he watched her with red eyes that were so familiar it made her heart ache.

“I should have let Raum keep you,” she told him through a constricted throat.

She swore his puppy eyes got sadder.

“Because he’d do a better job taking care of you,” she quickly explained.

“Because I can barely take care of myself, and I’m certainly not in any state to be caring for someone else.

Just look at Grim. The one thing I took under my wing turned into a jerk.

He hates everyone. I don’t even know where he is right now.

Sometimes I don’t see him for days.” She laughed bitterly.

“If I can screw up a cat that badly, remind me never to have kids.”

A phone rang from the kitchen at that moment, and Iris frowned. It wasn’t her ringtone, so what—

“Fuck,” she breathed, her eyes widening.

Climbing out of bed, she ignored the cold floor against her bare feet and ran naked into the kitchen to find the phone. It was under the table, probably having fallen there in the fray of Meph ripping his clothes off when he’d bent her over and screwed her brains out.

Oh god, that had been amazing. Her wildest fantasy come to life.

“Stop it,” she hissed and then grabbed the phone and stood up. “Hello?”

“Where are you? Bel is—” Raum’s gruff voice abruptly stopped. “Who is this?”

“It’s, um... Iris.”

There was a long silence.

Then, “’Sup, Iris.”

“Uh, not much.” Damn it, Raum always succeeded in making her squirm.

“You wanna give the phone to Meph?” There was a trace of humor in his voice.

Had Meph told him about their arrangement? Or had Raum just figured it out? She wasn’t going to ask. “He’s not here. He forgot his phone. Hey, uh, do you want to meet me somewhere so you can give it to him?”

“Why don’t you just give it to him yourself?”

“Um.” She winced. “I don’t know if we’ll be seeing each other for a while.” I don’t know if I deserve to see him. I don’t know if I even want to.

Another long, drawn-out silence. Then Raum sighed tiredly. “What’d he do now?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, feeling defensive on Meph’s behalf. “He didn’t do anything.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She was working out how to answer his question without actually answering it when she suddenly blurted out what she really wanted to know. “What happened to him in Hell? Why did he tattoo that binding sigil on himself?”

She pressed a palm to her forehead. What are you doing, Iris? Do you really want to go there? If she wanted a clean break from Meph and all the complications that came with him, now was the time to do it.

But was that what she wanted?

“Did you ask him?” Raum said.

“I did, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“I don’t know if it’s my story to tell either.”

“Right, yeah, that—”

“But... if you’re getting involved with him, you should probably know.”

Now would be the time to tell him she had no intention of doing any such thing and then suggest making plans to meet so she could give him the phone.

She remained silent.

Raum took her silence as an affirmation of his assumption, and Iris’s curiosity got the better of her. She had to know.

“Meph’s demon form is... fucked up,” Raum began. “He’s fairly young for a demon, and he can’t summon hellfire or turn to mist or whatever, but his demon form makes it so he doesn’t need any of that. He can defeat almost anyone on his own.”

“How? What is his other form?” The not-knowing was eating her alive.