Page 35 of He Who Sleeps

"You think your limits count on these two nights of the year? That's cute," he teased. "You signed the deal. If I wasn't worried about making you sick, I'd make you do it just to prove a point." He pulled his stool back up behind her and disinfected his hands, the sharp smell of the alcohol permeating the air. "You ready for this?"

She nodded. “Of course. Will these need much aftercare?”

"No more than a trip to get your bloods done," he told her. "It's the same needles." He wetted a cotton swab with the disinfectant and then started pulling the needles.

“And if I wanted piercings...I mean, going forward...is that something you would do?”

"Damn right, it's something I'd do." His hands stilled. "You'd be into that?"

“If you did it, yes. Only you, though. I feel like it would be part of what we have between us, something that’sjustus. I mean, I’m sure the guys would like it, but...”

"That warms my heart." He sounded sincere and she felt the ribbon rippling from her back to fall to the floor as he pulled the last two needles. "Just wait there a sec. You've got some blood spots."

She felt a cool pressure as he wiped them clean and then the prickly stickiness of tiny band-aids as he covered up the worst of them. "Come see me in the morning before you sleep and I'll clean them again," he told her, “but for now, we're done."

“Itwasfun.” She turned to him. “Did I earn my kisses?”

"Yes, you did." He gave her a soft, lingering kiss, one that was sweet and belied his deadly nature. "Looking forward to doing this all night sometime soon," he told her. "Not just snatched hours, twice a year."

She nodded. “I’m looking forward to pancakes in the morning with you,” she said softly and kissed his lips once more.

Eventually he drew back with a groan. "I'd love to keep you and canoodle like teenagers all night, but you have appointments to keep," he told her reluctantly. "You should head out."

She kissed him once more. “Only because they are appointments I want to keep. I’ll see you in a few hours.” Her hand went to his face. “Dawn.”

"I'll come find you," he promised, sliding her robe back over her shoulders. "I'll see you at dawn."

Chapter 14

Devil was waiting inthe foyer when Ghost came in from outside, wiping his muddied shoes on the mat with a fierce grin. Devil tried to match it. The Dark Lord knew he should be in a great mood after what had happened in the abandoned chapel, but the talk he'd just had with Stitches and Neon had soured his appetite considerably. Their suspicion that He Who Sleeps preferred pleasure to pain, or at least a mix of the two, and that the Elders had been covering that up for decades, if not centuries, was sitting like a heavy weight in his chest.

The well here was frothing, too, they said. Petra was giving off enough energy that the bridge to beneath where He slept was literally boiling. The Order raised killers, not lovers. How could they have gotten this all so wrong?

Neon's assertion that his father had possibly been doing research into the energy difference between pleasure and pain and that might have been what got their whole group killed had chilled Devil to the bone. Like the others, he'd sat and watched quietly, trying to keep his tears in and his whimpers down, as his father had been skinned alive before him. The agonized screams that had echoed around the chamber until he had mercifully passed into unconsciousness still haunted Devil's dreams all these years later.

And what had that agony served? If it wasn't what their God wanted? They had all died screaming that day, all except Stephan. And now Devil had to know why.