Page 7

Wonder

She barely has time to turn around before the devil is on her. In a flash, Wonder’s back slams into the bookshelves. Volumes shake like loose teeth. An avalanche of fiction hits the floor, and the hardcover slips from her fingers to join the casualties.

The slam of Malice’s body sucks the air from Wonder’s lungs, his forearm jabbing into her throat and cutting off her air supply.

His powerful body flattens hers against the shelves, the muscles beneath his clothes overlapping like bricks.

Those eyes could pierce through granite, the makings of a vendetta sharpening his irises, and his chaotic breath slithers across the pulse point of her throat.

Pinned like this, his form inundates Wonder. Up close, and for an instant, she mourns that man. Worse, she wants him to be that man.

But despite having the same face, this bastard doesn’t possess the same soul and never will. Bereavement morphs into resentment, because this moment is nothing to lament.

No. This is something to fight.

Wonder’s knee launches upward. It rockets between his thighs and rams into his cock.

The demon snarls, and she takes that opportunity to smash her flat, upturned palm into his jaw.

The force sends him flying into the opposite bookcase, the structure tipping like a domino, which strikes another domino, which strikes another, until the lane of stacks topples in succession.

The ground quakes as paperbacks and hardbacks plummet, mountains of texts strewn across the floor.

Vaguely, Wonder ponders whether a security camera is catching all of this. To the human eye, the shelves tumble over on their own, lacking points on the Richter scale to explain the phenomenon.

The demon god charges, throttling her back to the position in which they’d started. However, this particular bookcase stays put, a lone survivor that swivels but doesn’t yield.

She should have finished the chore and pounded him when she had the chance.

Instead, Malice’s forearm resumes its task, shackling Wonder’s neck and squeezing like it’s a tube.

His broad torso pumps into her breasts like a lit furnace, her thighs splitting involuntarily around his hips as he shoves her into the books.

Gilded waves sweep along her cheekbone, his features contorting into a savage mask of contempt. And satisfaction.

He fooled her. This morning, the demon hadn’t been tipping Wonder off, alluding to a secret clue. No, he merely fabricated the illusion of one, maneuvering her like a chess piece, placing his queen to strategic advantage.

Malice had expected Wonder to come here. He predicted she would take the research bait, unable to help herself.

But the hell how did he escape?

“Good girl,” Malice murmurs. “Bad guy.”

“How,” Wonder chokes. “How…?”

“Smart goddess,” he answers. “Smarter devil.”

That deceptive voice. It scrapes from his lungs, a tuneful hiss along the seam of her lips.

Her flesh prickles, his mouth twists, and his free hand pins both of her wrists overhead.

A few more inches, and Malice’s hips will press into the crease of her legs, though it’s hardly a lascivious move on the demon’s part.

Wonder thrashes, wrestling for an advantage. “Get off me.”

“She’s restless,” Malice interprets, his respirations thick against her cheek.

“It’s a wonder—ha!” A laugh unhinges from his tongue, the pun evidently uproarious.

“It’s a wonder you’d cave so quickly. Or it’s not a wonder at all.

Tell me, Goddess. Is it a wonder? Is it?

Or if you’re not going to answer, at least tell me what happened to your hands.

Every time I ask, you shut down, and your mouth closes as tightly as your cunt. ”

Wonder snarls like a tigress. In consequence, his amusement drops quicker than the blade of a guillotine, and his arm hammers her deeper into the shelf. “Don’t care for those questions? Then how about this one.” He exerts pressure, making her gag. “Where are my fucking letters?”

As if they’re sharing a secret, he leans in to hear the answer. And it’s close enough.

Wonder’s teeth snatch and sink. The devil growls in pain. Her body slumps as he releases her to clutch his bloody earlobe. Spinning, Wonder whips out an arm, executing a backhanded blow that catches his profile.

Malice goes down, crashing atop the books. Doubling over, Wonder braces her hands on her thighs and pants for breath while the demon god keels into himself, cursing a string of obscenities and worming across the mound of titles.

Four pairs of feet barrel through the library. Two couples breach the scene.

Andrew’s shock of white hair glows in the dark, his coat hangs open, and his arrow is pointing at Malice. “Not another move,” he warns.

Love stands beside her mate, raven tresses snarled in a lazy bun. Beneath her oversized jacket, a short black dress hangs to mid-thigh, and a pair of black wings sprout from her back. She grips her bow, an iron arrow nocked, but she lowers her weapon when she spots Malice on the ground.

Anger, on the other hand, doesn’t lower his bow any more than Andrew does. He’s livid, fury sizzling across his features. “What the eternal fuck!”

Stalling beside the rage god, his lady love brightens the hall with an aurora of pink hair and a frothy sweetheart dress, layers of tulle flaring like a carnation above a pair of ankle boots. “Kindred!” Merry gasps, launching toward Wonder, which will put her within range of Malice’s claws.

Anger blocks Merry, preventing his mate from achieving more than a step. The protective motion insults her, so that she’s about to shove past her lover. But Anger jolts again, shielding Merry from Malice’s venom.

“You’re a tad late, dearests,” Wonder wheezes.

No one replies. No one except the demon nursing his crimson ear.

Wonder has two options. Joke or weep.

She hates both choices. She hates that he’s locked in that vault.

She hates the feral glint of his eyes, the inferno of his voice, the structure of his face—the familiarity and foreignness of it.

She hates what his calculating stare does to her heart, her skull, and her soul.

She hates how his filthy words chafe her skin and slide between the rift in her thighs, wetting the intimate slit.

She hates that she likes the feeling. She hates that she’s ashamed of it too.

She hates that he’s escaped, that he’s imprisoned to begin with, confined like a rabid beast. She hates that history is repeating itself.

She hates that he suffers from nightmares.

She hates the madness in his voice and the trauma lurking behind his eyes.

She hates everything, when she’s never hated anything before.

She hates that he attacked her, when she doesn’t want to injure him. And she hates that as well, because this demon deserves nothing short of rancor.

She doesn’t want to rush him. She won’t rush him. She will not rush him.

“Motherfuck!” Malice launches to his feet. “You scholastic bitch!”

She rushes him.

With a battle cry, Wonder barrels toward Malice. Her target just waits, an anticipatory gleam flashing across his countenance, his bloody ear forgotten.

Two pairs of hands snatch Wonder’s elbows and haul her backward, her unshod heels skidding across the carpet.

Merry and Love clamp on, the moment pitting Wonder with remorse.

She goes limp, her eyes widening at the hideous, heartrending sight of Andrew and Anger restraining Malice, gripping his shoulders while he slings profanities her way.

“Who are you?” he roars while trashing against the males. “Who the fuck are you to me? Where the fuck are my letters? Where are they? Don’t fucking touch my shit again! They’re mine, like you’ll be mine when I get my fucking hands on you!”

As Merry’s hold loosens, it’s all Wonder can do not to bolt forward, to pry all those hands from Malice.

Stop hurting him! Stop it!

His mind is unwell. He doesn’t know any better!

Doesn’t he?

Although still restrained by her friend, Wonder manages a frail step. But then Merry’s there again, wheeling in Wonder’s path and clasping her cheeks, filling her vision with sympathetic eyes.

“Don’t look,” Merry whispers. “Don’t look at him. Just look at me.”

Wonder focuses on the goddess, who instructs her to breathe, just breathe. Their foreheads press, with Love hugging them both, the females knitting themselves together while Andrew and Anger haul Malice around the corner, his threats tearing down the corridor, burning a trail back to the vault.

***

“Get the fuck down here,” Anger grumbles at the pomegranate branch from which Wonder hangs upside down, with her limbs hooked over the bark.

“Leave her alone,” Merry chides, smacking her mate’s knee. “This is no occasion to bristle at our kindred, so lost in her time of woe.”

The god mutters to himself while holding Merry close, his limbs flanking her hips on a small patch of grass. He makes a crescent around her middle, tucking her into him, her back nestled into the bluff of his torso. It’s an endearing vision, one the lovers have earned.

Another becoming sight is Andrew reclining beneath the tree, his weight braced on flattened palms while Love straddles him.

But what’s not a precious vision is the third pairing.

Envy and Sorrow have placed a stadium’s worth of distance away from each other, their quarrel from earlier still holding.

It never ceases to amaze Wonder how those two became involved in the first place.

They’re polar opposites, the immortal embodiments of a corporate playboy and a gothic heroine, with Envy’s fetish for bespoke suits and Sorrow’s frayed attire.

Of everyone here, cynical Sorrow cares the least what others think of her, whereas arrogant Envy feeds off admiration.