Page 17 of Guarded (Hopeless Blessed #3)

This wasn’t good poetry. It was bad.

Very. Very. Bad.

Jeremiah and I exchanged an incredulous glance, both our lips twitching. His eyes were sparkling, asking me a silent question.

Is this supposed to be good?

I shook my head, breathing through my nose to try not to laugh. Behave. You’re an angel. An archangel. You can’t laugh at the poor human who’s comparing his love, Shelley, to raspberry jelly. It’s not the done thing.

Valiantly, I turned back to the stage. I could do this. Angels had a certain image to uphold.

Unfortunately, as a demon, I didn’t think Jeremiah held the same beliefs.

He was full-on vibrating now, tears gathering in his eyes. He had a knuckle in his mouth and was biting down hard to try and contain his laughter.

Our eyes met again and a shot of mischief went through me. A weird snort left my nose. Oh fuck. There was no way we were making it to the end of this poem without one of us fully breaking.

We shouldn’t laugh. It’s not kind.

It wasn’t, but this wasn’t even about the poem anymore. Jeremiah’s reaction was infectious. I couldn’t help it—he was unlocking a part of me I hadn’t even realised existed.

A part that wanted to…have fun .

Don’t get me wrong, I knew how to have a good time with my friends. But with my lover? No chance. That wasn’t what Lyle and I had been about. Not that Jeremiah was my lover. Of course he wasn’t.

But he might be, one day. When he’d seen everything he wanted to and I was ready to let him in. Then, I’d be grateful that we’d been friends first.

Because, with my friends, I could have fun.

The guy onstage was now lifting a hand into the air, his words quavering as he addressed the ceiling. Jeremiah made a sound like a kettle left on the stove for too long.

With a quick tug on my power, I threw up a compulsion net. Now we were safe to break without any humans noticing.

Jeremiah dissolved almost instantly, the whistling laugh morphing into a full-throated guffaw. “I can’t…I’m sorry…”

His wheezing words broke the last of my control. I doubled over, clutching at my stomach as my laughter joined his.

Every time I thought we had it in hand, all it took was our eyes meeting, and we’d be off again. We laughed until tears were running freely down our reddened cheeks.

Jeremiah wiped his away with the ball of his palm. “I’m sorry. Satan, I know it’s mean, but the more I tried not to, the harder it was.”

I couldn’t help myself. “That’s what he said.”

That set off a fresh round of giggles. I leaned against Jeremiah’s shoulder as I tried to pull myself together, my stomach literally aching from how much I’d laughed. My muscles were used to dealing with a lot, but not this.

Eventually we were able to calm ourselves down. The chap with the wobbly relationship had been replaced by someone reciting a sonnet about the tube.

Yep, the London underground was the topic he’d gone for. Less funny, but equally terrible. It was a good thing there was no afterlife for supes, because the amount of judging I was doing this evening would’ve condemned me straight to Hell.

Saying that, if Jeremiah was the one assigned to torture me for eternity, I probably wouldn’t have minded.

I side-eyed him, finding him far more interesting to watch than what was unfolding onstage. He’d managed to get rid of his giggles too, and was now wearing a frown that was equal parts confusion and horror.

I nudged his side before whispering in his ear, “Are you judging the talent?”

“That implies there’s talent to be judged,” he whispered back. “And yes, I’m fucking judging. Don’t sit there and tell me you’re not. Even archs can’t be that saintly.”

I tried to keep a straight face to argue back, but my lips betrayed me. A giggle escaped. “Okay, I’m totally judging too. This was a terrible idea.”

“No,” he said softly, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear. A trail of heat lingered in his wake, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with him being a demon. “This was a fantastic choice. Seeing you laugh like this has me wanting to make it happen over and over again.”

I’d like to say that I had a witty retort. Something charming that’d make Jeremiah smile.

But I had nothing. I simply stared at him, jaw swinging.

Jeremiah didn’t seem bothered, winking at me before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a hip flask. “Fancy some liquid courage to get us through the rest of this?”

The next person stepped onto the stage and started their set with a wail. Literally just opening their mouth and wailing into the microphone.

I gave the flask a pointed look. “Depends. Is that Adamanthea or human alcohol?”

The latter did nothing for supes. Adamanthea, however…

Jeremiah snorted, unscrewing the flask and holding it out. “What do you take me for? Of course it’s the good stuff.”

I grinned as I took it from his hand. “In that case, fuck yes. But you’re taking the blame for any trouble we get into this evening.”

His smirk made my stomach flip. “Sounds fair. You’re an arch, how bad can the trouble get?”

I sipped the Adamanthea. He was right. I was an arch.

But that didn’t mean I was very good at behaving.