Page 20 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

Margot flinched, the words striking my intended target. I regretted them immediately, felt the urge to heal the hurt I’d caused.

Maybe the reminder was more for me than it was for her.

She nodded her head in understanding, her pretty face pinched in pain as moisture welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft and broken.

“Don’t be sorry, songbird,” I said, some of the bitterness leaving my voice.

I couldn’t keep up my facade of anger when faced with her sorrow, couldn’t stay mad at our situation when she was so melancholy before me.

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but that doesn’t change the reality of what this is. ”

She swallowed, her throat moving with the motion as she turned to look away from me. “You’re right. It doesn’t,” she said in answer.

“I know you have your demons. But I’m not like the human men who have wronged you, because I’m not human.

I’m not like him, and I am not going to touch you unless you want me to.

If you never want me to, then I’ll accept that.

Because that is the bare minimum of what you are owed,” I said, watching her head snap back to meet my stare.

Her mahogany eyes were wide with shock. “Beelzebub,” she murmured.

I flinched.

There was power in names.

“I need you not to say my name again, songbird,” I said, willing her to understand how much I meant that statement. My name in her voice did something to me, unraveled layers of my control that neither of us could afford to lose.

“What?” she asked.

“I like it, more than I want to admit, and I can’t like it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Margot held her hands out in front of her, twisting them with subdued energy that seemed to attempt to mask her need to move.

I knew from the time I’d spent watching her that this was a moment she would have gone for a run, when the emotional contradictions within her made her compelled to move and push herself until she was so tired there was nothing left.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, a question in her voice. She didn’t dare to theorize as to what I actually meant, didn’t dare to hope that I was just as disinterested in being attracted to her as she was in having me attracted to her.

“You and I are never going to fit. I am a demon, and you are a witch. We are everything that each other has grown to hate. It doesn’t make sense, and it can’t make sense.

If I am going to keep you safe in this place, then I can’t get caught up in you and your spell.

I can’t like the way you say my name. I can’t like the way you look at me when you think I’m not looking.

I can’t do anything but protect you for Lucifer and bring you home.

And when I do, it doesn’t matter how interesting I think you are, I’ll leave you with Willow and never look back.

Because this cannot happen,” I said, leaving no doubt as to the meaning of my words.

I’d hoped that the assertion would ease some of her tension, allow her to rest easy in the knowledge that I had no interest in being further enslaved to her will.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she asked, her voice so hollow it shocked me.

I’d thought it would reassure her that her body was safe with me; instead it seemed to make things worse.

She picked at the skin on the side of her nail, anxious energy thrumming through her.

“I know exactly what I did to you, as unintentional as it might have been. I warned you to stay away from me, but you didn’t. ”

“I know,” I acquiesced. I’d made our situation worse by giving in to the call, because in Hollow’s Grove there had been so little at stake. I couldn’t rid myself of the witches without pissing Lucifer off, and to convince Him to do so would take time.

There hadn’t seemed to be any harm in finding a witch to entertain myself with in the meantime. None of it would have mattered after I grew bored with her.

She left me, making her way to the window and staring out over the red earth of Purgatory.

“What do we have to do to get me back home?” she asked, turning to face me finally.

All traces of discomfort and sadness were gone from her face, the brief moment she’d allowed herself over and done with.

The Margot standing before the window was all business, to the point and direct in a way I hadn’t seen her.

Desperate to be free of Hell, or desperate to be free of me ?

The thought stung far more than it should have, considering I’d said pretty much the same to her face.

“We need to make our way to the Ninth Circle. The manor there holds the only form of communication we will have with Lucifer, and from there we can make a plan for Willow to open the portal again. Assuming she’s still alive, anyway,” I said, noting the way Margot winced at the mention of the fate she didn’t know.

Her friends were lost to her for the time being, and while the main threat had plunged into Hell with us, there was no telling what other threats might have made themselves known in the hours since we’d fallen.

“It sounds like you’d best be on your way, then,” Margot said, dropping down into the window seat and planting herself as if she refused to be moved.

I grinned, the confidence in her voice with that dismissal calling to the part of me that enjoyed the challenge.

Stubborn, difficult little witch.