Page 30 of Satanic Shadow

Is this normal? To lie in bed with an enemy who wants to kill you and to be… sexually frustrated?

To ease the tension between my thighs, I rub them together and say, “Explain to me how you’d even do that?”

“Explain to me what a cactus is and I will.”

I purse my lips. “You don’t have them in the Shadow Realm?”

“No.” His response is blunt and bored and full of tiredness. He’s falling asleep again.

I laugh. “You are doomed. It’s basically a penis-shaped plant covered in spikes.”

Dane doesn’t respond; I can feel just a slight shake of his head behind me as his breaths grow heavier, like the arm still bracketing my body.

Three hundred seconds drag in, and neither of us speaks; neither of us mention the silhouettes waking up within the walls and watching us. A little dog wags its tail and shows us a ball. A little girl waves, and when I unravel my arm from beneath Dane’s, I wave back.

The motion must wake him.

“Time’s up,” is all he says.

My heart stops, and I have no idea why. I don’t like Dane. I hate him. And he wants me six feet under or tossed in a river somewhere. But a huge part of me wants to stay like this a little longer.

Dane doesn’t move, and neither do I.

“Has it definitely been six hours?” I ask, trying to turn my head to look at him.

He tightens his hold around my body, stopping me. “Yes. I believe so.”

“Then you should probably go.”

He hums. “I should.”

A calm silence falls between us.

But then he loosens his hold; however, the touch of his skin against mine doesn’t vanish instantly. My nightdress has dangerously hiked up, bunching at my hips. And with him slowlyputting distance between us, the heated area of my back turns cold.

I almost reach for his hand to keep him there.

Almost.

Dane sits up; runs both hands across his jaw and into his hair, messing it even more. “It’s five in the morning.”

“Are you so magical that you have an invisible watch?”

The confusion on his face makes me giggle, and I cover my mouth with my hand as I turn onto my side to watch him.

“What is funny?”

“Did you have anything in your world? You have no idea who Peter Pan is, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What did you watch growing up? Wait. No TV, I’m guessing. No phones or internet. No plants apparently. And you don’t have goddamn hot-water bottles! What did you do for fun?”

“We aren’t doing task one again, human.”

My mouth opens. Closes. “Oh.”

He looks at me as if he wants to speak some more, yet neither of us bother, and, right now, I can’t avert my tired gaze. Dane has sleepy eyes all the time, even more so when he just wakes. I would say he was cute if it wasn’t for the personality transplant he needs and the obvious darkness in his soul.

“Stop looking at me,” I say. “It’s creepy.”

Dane groans and lies back down, his strong shoulder right there, in my line of sight. And my God is it a nice shoulder. The arch of his neck makes me want to dig my nails into it, my teeth, to mark it by sucking on the skin.