Page 38

Chapter 37

A Goner for the Son of Satan

Jemma

H e was in his human form by the time he stepped out of the portal, with me cocooned in his strong arms. A pang of disappointment rocked me. A strange sixth sense that what we’d just experienced in Hell was a one-time thing.

And that just wouldn’t do.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, Mouse.” He strode towards the bedroom door, fumbling with the handle, tugging it open and carrying me out into the hallway.

“Jemma? Did you—oh!” Ezra’s voice went up a full octave. I hid my head in SJ’s shoulder, stifling a hysterical giggle against his pec.

“We did,” SJ answered, a hint of amusement in his tone. “And now I must prepare Jemma for bed. Bad … good night, Ezra.”

And he continued towards the bathroom as if it was completely normal for us to appear out of nowhere, completely naked, sweaty and sex-mussed and covered in a variety of bodily fluids.

When we were shut inside the bathroom, he ran the shower, keeping me ensconced in his arms. And I felt safe … I felt like I was home.

Holy Hell, I hoped that we could sort all of this out between us. Because I was just a teeny bit in love with the big devil.

“Are you sore?” he asked softly, stepping under the warm spray and setting me down, my back propped against his front. “That was … intense.”

“It was incredible,” I sighed contentedly, reaching for my body wash and his hand. I squirted some into it. “But you did just promise to clean me up, and I know how much you enjoyed doing just that earlier.”

“Bad grief, Mouse … and look where that ended. I will not be taking you again tonight. There’s a fine line between ruining you for other males and wrecking you entirely. I am not prepared to cross it.”

I giggled. “So don’t. Just wash me, and …” I turned to face him, my hands resting on his chest. “Don’t run off again. Promise?”

His face softened. “No running off tonight.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the promise I’d been asking for. But it was better than nothing.

As he cleaned me, I discovered that I actually was a little—well more than a little sore. But he was gentle, swiping the soap over my tender parts, rinsing me off. His cock jutted against my hip, hard again. Not quite as enormous as it was in his devil form, but still more than enough to satisfy me. To make my parts ache in ways that only reminded me how tender I was there.

But he was the consummate gentleman, attending to my shoulders and back with the same loving care he gave my belly and breasts. His touch was … reverent. Not sexual, although it was obvious he was savouring every touch, the same way I was delighting in the contact.

“All clean now,” he rumbled as he rinsed me down.

“Do I get to return the favour?” I asked, reaching for the body wash.

He stilled my hand. “I am trying so very hard to be … to be good, right now, Mouse.” His tone was strained. “I don’t need your soft little palms turning me bad again.”

“I happen to like you bad,” I replied archly, but I let him take the body wash and spread it on his own palms. His jaw was suddenly tight, and I wondered if that had possibly been a very silly thing to say. After all, I wanted him to make the right choices when it came to my soul. To be the good being I knew lived at the heart of him.

And then he started rubbing the suds all over his delicious body.

“I changed my mind,” I blurted, my lips parting as his hands descended, over ridged abs, to soap his bobbing cock, to cradle his balls. Why was this simple task so ridiculously sensual? “I am very much enjoying this view of you being … good.”

“My insatiable little Mouse. I’m pleased that you find this version of me as … titillating as my true form.” He was amused, but there was an edge to his tone. My stomach dipped with sudden nerves, as he shut off the shower, reaching for my towel, wrapping it around me.

I dried off, scuttling out to the linen cupboard to grab a clean towel for him. He dried his fantastic body with the same methodical precision he’d washed himself, and I got the same sense of delight from watching.

There was no point denying it. I was a goner for the Son of Satan.

But while I thought our fantastically hot sex had carried about a thousand unspoken words in it, we still needed to have an actual conversation. About our future. And about my soul.

I really hated serious conversations.

It could wait until the morning. He’d promised that he wouldn’t disappear on me for the rest of the night, and I was determined that tonight would be perfect. Serious conversations always ruined perfect.

Once we were in my room, I climbed straight under the covers without putting a scrap of clothing on. SJ hovered by the edge of the bed, adorably uncertain, his dick still half erect.

“This feels … improper, Jemma,” he muttered, bemused.

I wrinkled my nose at him with a teasing grin. “Oh, come on. We’ve just done much more improper things than a bit of skin-to-skin snuggling.” I pulled the covers away from his side of the bed—wow, I was already referring to it as his side—and wiggled my backside. “In you hop, I’ve got plenty back here to keep you nice and toasty.”

SJ pinched the bridge of his nose, but a chuckle burst out of him, and with a huff, he slid between the covers. Immediately his cock tucked up between my butt cheeks.

“Well, I don’t think there’ll be much sleeping going on tonight,” I murmured, wriggling back against him. He hissed but did nothing to put space between us as he pulsed between my cheeks.

“I have not had this little control over myself since I was a teenage devil,” he mumbled against my hair.

“Is that because you’re a deviant now?” I teased. “Naughty Satan Junior, getting his rocks off on boning the little human?” Not that I could talk—I had absolutely gotten my rocks off, more times than I could keep count of.

Those tender parts of me throbbed in reminder of just how many orgasms he’d given me.

“No, Mouse. It’s because I have … feelings … when it comes to you.”

I stilled, barely daring to breathe. Was this happening? Were we having the serious conversation now, despite my valiant attempts to keep things light and smutty?

My heart thundered, and before I could think twice, I was twisting to face him, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding onto him like he was my lifeline.

“I have feelings for you, too,” I admitted, my mouth brushing against his collarbone as I spoke. He stiffened against me.

“You … you do?” He sounded utterly shocked by my words.

“Of course I do, you silly devil! How could I not?” I leaned back to search those silver eyes of his. His brow furrowed, and I had the desperate urge to lean up and smooth that little crease between his eyebrows with my lips.

“Because I was trying to steal your soul, Mouse,” he muttered.

Yep! Serious conversation incoming whether I liked it or not. I took a deep breath to ready myself, then blew it out.

“But you’ve also done so many other sweet and kind and … hold on!” I gasped, my fingers digging into his impressive biceps. “That was past tense!”

“I don’t follow …”

A smile crept over my face. “You just said, ‘I was trying to steal your soul’! Because you don’t want to anymore, do you? Because you … have feelings for me?”

Holy Hell, I hoped I was right … I gazed up at him, waiting for him to say something. His expression was thunderstruck, but his fingers were sliding up my ribs, my shoulders and throat until he was cupping my face.

“I’ve been avoiding you this past fortnight, Mouse,” he admitted, the bald truth of his words softened by the way his thumb caressed my jaw, the way his eyes glistened with feeling as he gazed down at me. “Not because I don’t want to see you—I always want to see you—but because there is … pressure, from my family, to complete my test run on the Soul Token … on you.”

I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat, as heaviness settled in my stomach. “So, does that mean that we’re … that no matter what happens here …” I gestured between our naked bodies, my fingers trembling. “That this has to happen? That you have to take my soul?”

His lips tightened and he shook his head, his hands finding my shoulders and gripping me. “No. I won’t let that happen. I just need … I need more time, to work out how to undo what I’ve done. I don’t … I don’t believe that we can just return the piece I took the same way that I took it. I’m scared to try that, because it could end with the Token sucking more of your soul into itself, and I don’t …” His face crumpled, and like a flash, his arms scooped me into him, holding me so tightly against his big chest. “The last thing I wish is to cause you more pain, Mouse.”

“I wish you’d come to me and told me all of this instead of trying to worry through it on your own,” I mumbled. “We could have figured this out together.”

Slowly he released me, looking down at me with wonder in his eyes. “I thought you … after that morning, in this very bed, when you … when we … and then your expression changed. I thought you’d come to your senses, realised that you didn’t want … this … with me, when I’m who … what I am.”

A giggle erupted from me. “You fell into the miscommunication trope trap, SJ!” I cackled, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I warned you about that, didn’t I? It’s just lucky you came to your senses and invited me to your little Hell Shenanigan tonight, or you might have ended up needing to do some serious grovelling.”

“I did not invite you,” he grouched. “I would never have invited you into danger like that, to be accosted by my … by my own father, of all demons! If the Hounds hadn’t …” His eyes darkened, his mouth tilting into a scowl. “The bloody Hounds!”

I squinted in confusion. “Beezle and Bub?”

SJ nodded gruffly. “I should have known … they were acting so strangely. Well, stranger than they usually act, anyway. How did they do it?”

“Are you saying it was the Hounds who invited me tonight?”

He nodded again. “How did you receive the invitation?”

“It was a text message. Because I sent you one, to the FiendPay number! I—” I clamped my mouth shut because there was absolutely no way I was going to confess that I’d texted ‘Yo’ to him. “I … uh … I missed you. And I got replies from the number, so I … I assumed we were talking.” I felt a sudden surge of humiliation, that I’d been flirting over text with a pair of infernal dogs.

“Well … it appears I have a great deal to thank those ridiculous critters for, then,” SJ mused. “If they had not interfered, I would have been alone in my room tonight, pining miserably.”

That humiliated feeling dissipated, replaced with warmth trickling outwards from my chest. How did he keep saying things that wormed him even deeper into my heart?

“You’ve been pining for me?”

Another nod. “Amidst bouts of frantic masturbation after re-reading all the pornographic scenes in that book you loaned me, while picturing you and I in the roles of the main characters.”

I giggled, then squeaked at the feel of something trickling between my legs. It could have been all that devil jizz working its way out, but it was also almost that time of the month for me. I clambered out of bed and scuttled to the bathroom, taking one look between my legs to confirm my suspicions.

“Great timing, period!” I snapped. I snagged my menstrual cup out of its case when he knocked on the door.

“Are you well, Mouse?” he asked, concern lacing his tone.

A little laugh trumpeted out of me. “Just a bit of leaking blood, that’s all. It’s completely under control.”

I was adjusting my cup to the right spot when the handle turned on the door and SJ loomed over me.

“Where are you bleeding?” he demanded, his eyes wild when he saw me fiddling between my legs. “Did I … have I hurt you?”

“Oh my goodness, you overprotective thing!” I tugged the cup gently to ensure it was firm and straightened, washing my hands. I turned and gave his bicep a reassuring squeeze. “My period just started. You didn’t hurt me. But if you’re squeamish about?—”

“Nothing about your body could disgust me.”

I grinned. “Not even watching me prod around in my eye for my contact lenses?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Nothing.”

I shrugged, turning back to the mirror. With a couple of quick movements, I had both of them out and back in their case. My vision was blurry, but I smiled at the SJ-shaped blob.

“Well, we can safely say that there will be no little Satan Junior Juniors popping out of me in nine months’ time.”

“I … I did not even consider the implications of …” I could just imagine the worried frown on his face, which only made me melt more for him.

I sidled up to him, nuzzling my nose in the warmth of his chest. “Well, it’s lucky that I track my cycle very studiously, and that you assured me weeks ago that there were no demonic illnesses … I hope that includes STIs?”

“It does.”

“No wonder your kind loves their orgies then!” I remarked. “Now, carry me back to bed, SJ, because I can’t see a thing without my glasses.”