Page 15 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

Beelzebub made a sound that was half groan and half growl—anything but menacing—and turned his head to look at me slowly over his shoulder. I swallowed, pursing my lips together as I held his intense dark stare.

The other demon cleared his throat. “Should I try to send for a healer? It could take some time to track one down,” he mused, eyeing the place where I still held Beelzebub’s wing in my fingers.

I released it, taking a step back and averting my eyes. The way he eyed that touch made it feel like something intimate.

“The cat will only need a couple of stitches. You’re capable of tending to him, and do it quickly before he licks himself raw,” Beelzebub said to the demon, but his stare never left my face.

I felt it from the corner of my eye, but couldn’t bear to meet it.

Not when I had the distinct feeling I’d just committed some sort of fucking foreplay.

In front of another man.

“What about you, sire?” the demon asked, reaching down to scoop Jonathan into his arms. The cat hissed, sinking his claws into the male’s flesh, but the demon didn’t so much as flinch.

“I’ll manage on my own. Waiting for a healer will take too long, and the wing will heal wrong if it isn’t stitched together quickly,” Beelzebub said, shrugging his shoulders.

“There is truly no healer in Purgatory?” I asked with a sigh. I hated the very notion that we would be delayed by waiting for one, but also didn’t see a way for Beelzebub to twist his body in the right way to do it himself.

“People don’t come here hurt. They come here dead,” the demon said, answering my question with a raised eyebrow.

“How do you expect to be able to stitch your own wing? Can you even see what you’re doing?” I asked, pinching my nose between two fingers.

“Not particularly well, no, but unless you would like to volunteer to do it for me, I haven’t got much choice,” he said, the casual ease with which he dismissed help from any others taking my breath away.

“I’m no healer,” I argued, raising my gaze to glare at him finally. He smirked at the ire in my face, that weird response I always got when he finally pushed me past my limits. “Is there no one else who can do it?”

Beelzebub pursed his lips, seeming to think over the question before he finally answered.

“No one I trust not to fuck it up intentionally. I don’t care to have to tear it open all over again, and you’ll quickly learn that asking favors of demons comes at a price that is often far worse than the initial problem,” he explained, pausing as if choosing to give me a moment to allow that information to sink in.

“Satanus and Asmodeus will be here shortly!” he called to the demon who’d greeted us.

He turned his back, gesturing for me to follow him as he made his way to the stairs.

“I don’t know how to do stitches,” I admitted, following after him. In Hollow’s Grove, his presence had felt dangerous, but here, it was a comfort. He was the one familiar thing I had to cling to when my entire world had been torn away.

“You could always heal me in other ways, songbird,” he teased, both of us knowing that most Reds would merely offer him pleasure and use that energy to heal him. He also knew that I wouldn’t, and his words lacked the punch that I would have felt from anyone else.

There was a certain comfort in him already knowing where my limits were.

“Stop calling me that,” I argued instead of responding to the empty taunt. He guided me to the top of the stairs, stopping in front of a door. He tested the knob, guiding me into the privacy of a beautiful bedroom.

I tried to ignore how pretty everything was in spite of the darker color palette, feeling completely at ease with the red that surrounded me. “Why? So you don’t have to admit how much you like it?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

He moved for the dresser, tugging open a drawer and pulling out a needle and something that looked like a cross between fishing wire and thread.

I swallowed, not knowing how to find the words to admit why I hated that fucking nickname so much.

The day he gave it to me, the first time I laid eyes on Beelzebub, he’d caught me singing to myself.

It had only been the faintest hum; I thought I was alone in the courtyard Willow loved so much.

I loved the way her flowers had strayed toward me as if they, too, couldn’t resist the magic of my song.

I couldn’t have imagined there was a demon watching, listening to me sing, and falling prey to my spell.

Every time he called me that, every time he referenced the magic in my veins, it was only another reminder.

He was caught under my spell, whether I liked it or not, and no matter what I did, one thing remained true.

I couldn’t free him, and I’d stripped away his free will as harshly as Itan had taken mine.

Beelzebub might not have felt any outright suffering from my violation, and he likely never would. But if I could only not sing to him and not touch him, then one day, the spell would wear off on its own and he could move on with his life.

Leaving me in fucking peace, finally.