Page 35 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

SALT IN THE WOUND

M EPH WANDERED TO THE CLOSEST PARK TO I RIS’S apartment and sat on an ice-crusted swing. It was cold as shit and late, and there was no one around. No one in their right mind hung out in a park when it was twenty below.

But Meph wasn’t in his right mind, so it was all good.

He felt like a dumb-fuck pansy for how he’d acted at Iris’s, and his skin crawled when he thought about it. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, freaking out because of his emotions and, worse, telling her about them after.

Why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut? It wasn’t like he’d expected Iris to return his feelings once he admitted them. It wasn’t like he wanted her to, right?

He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t understand his own emotions because he had existed as an unfeeling void of darkness for most of his life. It was only after he’d met Raum that he’d started trying to be anything different.

He still remembered the night he’d begged Raum for help. He’d fucked with the human he’d been sent to torture so badly that the guy went insane. He’d met his new friend in an alehouse to celebrate a job well done, and the two of them had gotten shitfaced.

Under the influence, it was like a dam broke inside them.

Raum had told him how he’d just lost three centuries of memory as heavenly punishment for a crime he no longer remembered.

And Meph... All of a sudden, he’d been begging Raum to save his ass, to help him so he never had to go back to Valefor’s lair, so he never again had to lose himself to the abyss of bottomless hunger that was all he’d ever known.

And Raum had agreed.

Meph didn’t know what Raum had been doing on Earth at that time and probably never would—Raum sure couldn’t tell him—but his new friend had dropped everything in a heartbeat to help a relative stranger.

It was pretty much the most unde-monic thing Meph had ever heard of, and they’d been bonded ever since.

A hundred years or so later, they’d joined forces with Ash and Bel.

Meph hadn’t been able to hold onto his human form indefinitely back then.

He would snap under pressure and be forced to shift every so often.

Every time, it was a nightmare getting him to shift back.

His demon never wanted to relinquish control.

Bel had gotten accustomed to hellfire roasting him within an inch of his life to manage it. Finally, they’d discovered a way to bind his demon permanently with the tattoo, and his days of being fried were over.

And now, here he was. Every day Meph spent on Earth, he felt less and less like his old self, and that constantly nagging beast caged inside him seemed further and further from the surface. He felt balanced. In control of himself. Even... content.

Or he had felt that way.

Now, he just felt like an idiot. He’d been fucking a human woman—witch, whatever—for a couple of weeks, and he was ready to confess his love like some pathetic mortal? Had she bewitched him with her magic blue hair?

Worse, he was certain now he hadn’t been able to let other females touch him before because he’d been looking for an emotional connection. That was why he’d gotten panicky interacting with random women. Because there were no feelings involved.

Sad. Embarrassing.

He’d thought he felt that connection with Iris, which was why he’d never had a problem being intimate with her. Except he’d imagined it. It had all been one-sided.

Even more sad and embarrassing.

No wonder she didn’t want him back. No wonder the idea of a relationship with him repulsed her. He repulsed himself too. He was fucking weak and good for nothing except violence and killing and—

Put it in the art , Jacqui’s voice said inside his head. She was pointing a finger and looking at him with that slightly crazed, passionate look she got when she talked about this stuff. Don’t analyze, don’t dwell, just put it in the art.

Meph jumped off the swing. Fuck sitting here feeling sorry for himself. He was going to do what he always did recently to get his mind off his, well, mind.

He patted his pockets for his phone, intending to shoot Jacqui a text and see if she was cool with him dropping by this late. She always was, even when she wasn’t working with him, but he liked to let her know he was coming anyway.

Except... his pockets were empty. He stuffed his hands in just to make sure and found nothing. He didn’t even have his pack of smokes or lighter. Because he’d left all of it at Iris’s.

“Motherfuck the fucker,” he said to the silent park and the light snowflakes drifting lazily from the sky.

He could either go back to Iris’s place now and get his phone or go straight to Jacqui’s without telling anyone.

The latter was by far the more appealing option, but it was also stupid since it meant hiding from Iris because he was embarrassed about his outburst. Plus, he hadn’t spoken to Raum or Bel since their little bitch fight, and his brothers would probably start wondering where he was.

If Meph had his phone, he could update Raum via text without having to actually see him.

So basically, he was choosing between hiding from Raum or hiding from Iris. He shook his head at himself.

While he wasn’t sure why he’d been hiding from Raum lately, he suddenly knew he didn’t want to see him right now.

One look, and Raum would know exactly what was going on in Meph’s head.

Those shiny gold eyes saw way too deeply for anyone’s comfort, and Raum knew him too well to fall for any kind of brush-off comment.

Meph wasn’t ready to confront shit on his own, and he sure as hell wasn’t ready for Raum to confront it either.

So Iris it was then.

His stomach churned, but he started trudging through the snow toward her place, promising himself he would leave as soon as he got his phone. He wouldn’t say anything about what had happened before, and he highly doubted Iris would bring it up if he didn’t.

Plus... he kind of wanted to see her. One last time.

Call him stupid—and he did—but that was the truth of it.

When he reached Iris’s building, he started up the stairs and stopped outside her front door. There, he hesitated.

Grab and go , he reminded himself. It would be quick. Like pulling off a bandage. Or ripping out a pole impaled through his chest.

He lifted a hand to knock.

The door opened beside him. Not Iris’s door, but her neighbor’s.

Meph froze with his arm still raised and watched a long leg step through the doorway. Something about that moment had his heart stopping and the cold seeping into his bones. His gaze traveled up the man’s body as he emerged from the apartment, until it finally landed on his face.

Tawny hair and dark eyes, patrician features, tall and elegant.

The cold plummeted to arctic temperatures, and Meph’s trepidation became flat-out fear. Denial. Disbelief.

“Hello, Mephistopheles.”

Meph didn’t even blink. He was frozen stiff, staring into eyes he’d thought he left behind. Those eyes weren’t supposed to be able to find him here. He was supposed to have been safe.

“You—” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Didn’t matter. Apparently, Val wasn’t interested in what he had to say. Before Meph had a chance to act, Val took a step toward him and stabbed a big fucking syringe into his arm, the needle long and sharp enough to penetrate his layers of clothing.

The cold became burning. Really intense burning. Where the fuck did he get angel blood? Scorching heat hotter than hellfire consumed him from the inside out, and the world went black.

Iris had eventually hauled herself up from the kitchen floor and wandered into her bedroom, where she fell face first onto the bed. She hadn’t moved until Faust started barking for no apparent reason, and even then, it was only to crawl under the covers and finally fall asleep.

She woke the following morning feeling... different.

Empty, but in a good way. Like she’d cleared out things that had been taking up a lot of space, and now there was room for something else. It wasn’t necessarily a happy feeling—in fact, it felt isolating and bleak in some ways—but she knew it was progress.

But mixed with that was a hollow ache in her chest that she knew was for Meph.

It was that feeling that finally motivated her to get out of bed.

Raum had told her to stay out of it, and a part of her still thought he was right, but she’d decided to ignore it.

And if he called her to pick up Meph’s phone, she was going to ignore that too.

She was going to give Meph his phone herself. And they were going to talk.

Just talk , she told herself. She wanted to make things right, to apologize for her actions, but that was as far as she was taking it for now.

After a quick shower, she got dressed, pulling on a huge T-shirt and hoodie of Meph’s—he had the nicest clothes, and she was feeling sentimental, so sue her—over a pair of winter leggings.

Slippers on her feet, she went to the kitchen and fed herself and her animals.

Checking her own phone, she found several missed calls and texts from Suyin telling her to get back to her right away because it was important.

Iris ignored them. She didn’t want to talk to Suyin right now. She was too raw, and all the lying and secret keeping was too much to bear.

Plus, she had things to do.

Bundling up in her parka, she picked up Faust and zipped him up inside. Or tried to. The zipper wouldn’t go over him anymore, which made her panic a little. She knew he was growing, but she hadn’t expected it to be this fast.

She compromised by wrapping him up in a big scarf to compensate for the open zipper.

Yes, he could have just walked on the leash—the sidewalks had been plowed after the storm so there was no risk of losing him in a snowbank—but she didn’t feel like cleaning his muddy feet later.

And maybe she wanted to cuddle him a little.