Page 11 of Unleashing Mayhem (Demon Bound #4)

Matty

M atty watched the end credits of the movie blankly, making no move to grab the remote just yet.

He might have liked to put on another, but Nightmare had let him watch this one curled up in his lap, warm and safe and cozy.

Matty was worried that if he moved, Nightmare would come to his senses and shove him off.

Okay, he probably wouldn’t shove. But maybe he’d slip out like one of his shadows. And then Matty would be cold and alone and sad, with no one’s strong arms surrounding him.

And maybe Nightmare hadn’t let him so much as Matty had just crawled up onto the demon’s thighs and settled in, wrapping blankets around them both before anyone could protest.

So. No moving.

But it didn’t matter, because Nightmare was already slipping out from under Matty, just like Matty had thought he would.

Although, less expected was how Nightmare knelt in front of the couch, his hands on either side of Matty’s folded legs. The position put them at eye level with each other, and Nightmare’s pair were a flat white at the moment, narrowed slightly as he stared at Matty.

“Hello,” Matty said.

Nightmare stayed silent. Watching. Waiting.

Ugh. It was time for Matty to start talking, wasn’t it? The thought made him weirdly petulant. “There’s still a body in the foyer,” he pointed out. “A dead one.”

Nightmare didn’t even twitch. “My shadows will take care of it.”

“And the glass?” Matty frowned at him. “Sascha’s been really nice to me. I don’t want him to come home and find everything all messed up.”

“My shadows will repair the damage.”

Matty picked some fuzz off his blanket with a scowl. “They can do just about anything, huh?”

If Nightmare thought Matty was being a brat, he didn’t say so. He only nodded regally. “They can do many things, yes.”

His antlers were so close. And because Nightmare had yet to refuse him any sort of touch (except that one time Matty had tried to jerk him off, and Matty wasn’t letting himself think about that time because it was too embarrassing to mention), Matty reached up, stroking one of the branches.

It was velvety soft. He pressed his thumb against it to test its strength. Solid. Sturdy.

“Matteo.”

Matty sighed, stroking the velvet...fur? Skin? He wasn’t sure. He stroked the velvet whatever of Nightmare’s antler. “What do you want to know?”

“Who is Dominico Caruso and why does he haunt you?”

Straight to the point. How mean of him. Matty stalled for time by studying his demon, his monster of the dark, not just in form but in spirit.

Because Matty had seen Nightmare’s face when he’d been torturing Dominico’s goon. Nightmare had enjoyed it. A lot. His white eyes had been glowing and his skull face’s teeth had been bared in a jagged grin.

And Matty didn’t care.

He should care, shouldn’t he?

Matty let out another sigh, dropping his hand from Nightmare’s antler and twisting his fingers in his lap.

“He was my stepfather Luca’s cousin. Or maybe half brother?

They were never straightforward about it.

Either way, he was a psychopathic dog, and Luca held his leash.

He was— is …” Matty tried to find words for it that didn’t make him want to dry heave.

“He took a liking to me early on. When I was still a boy. Luca put him in charge of—of my punishments. He enjoyed them.” Matty let his eyes drop to Nightmare’s crotch pointedly. “ Really enjoyed them.”

Nightmare let out a low growl, and the dangerous sound bolstered Matty the slightest bit.

He kept going, pushing the truth out before he could think too hard about it.

“He wanted to do more than punish me. He wanted to keep me as one of his pets. Sometimes— Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him in my room, sitting on my bed.

He’d tell me everything he had planned for me. ”

Dominico had made a habit of it, especially at the end. Whenever he was due to report in to Luca, he’d skulk into Matty’s room in the dead of night and whisper horrors to him in the dark. Luca had allowed it, as long as Dominico didn’t touch Matty without his permission.

Matty had been terrified of falling asleep. Terrified of finding Dominico waiting in the shadows when he woke. The monster he couldn’t seem to shake.

Matty blinked back stubborn tears. He was safe here. Safe to talk about it. Safe to remember. “So Luca held it over both of us—giving me to Dominico. A threat to keep me from running or talking, and a promise to keep Dominico obeying his orders without question.

“I—I saw some of the boys he kept.” Matty swallowed through a thick throat. “Their bodies afterward. He’s—he’s evil .” He made himself meet Nightmare’s eyes, made himself admit the truth. “But so am I.”

When Nightmare only cocked his head, silently demanding Matty keep going, Matty told him, “I stood by while they did awful things, Sarkaron. The pair of them, and the men who followed them. I let fear make me complacent. I should have killed them both, or gone to the FBI, or—or something . But I was too afraid Luca would catch me. Afraid he’d give me over to Dominico when he did. And over time…”

Matty twisted his fingers together so hard it hurt. “Luca wanted to break me. To make me into the kind of man he could use. The kind who would hurt innocent people and not care. A real successor and not just a scared little boy at his side.”

Matty leaned forward, dropping his forehead onto Nightmare’s shoulder, unable to bear letting Nightmare see his face as he let the truth spill out.

“Maybe you can taste it in my soul, Scary. That they succeeded. Because I liked watching you hurt that man. I’m glad he’s dead.

I wish he’d suffered more. I didn’t used to be that way.

I—I used to be good, I think. But they broke me like they wanted, and now I want to cut them all with my jagged pieces. Cut them into ribbons. ”

Matty waited for Nightmare to shove him off. To hold Matty accountable for all the rot inside him. Any minute now Nightmare would tell Matty that he was too wicked to deserve anyone’s help, even a demon’s.

But there were only gentle fingers in Matty’s hair, stroking softly as Nightmare asked, “Why didn’t you trust Sascha and Kai to keep you safe, Matteo?”

“They’re trying to get out of Mafia business,” Matty explained.

Sascha had told him all about it once. How much he hated the world he’d grown up in.

How much he wanted to keep himself and Kai away from it all.

“They want to stick to the light. To keep it to legal businesses and no violence. And Dominico… He works in the shadows.”

Nightmare let out a quiet, raspy laugh. “Sweet summoner, I own the shadows.”

Matty heard that simple statement for what it was: a promise. Nightmare was going to protect him, even though Matty was rotten and weak. Maybe that was because of the contract—maybe Nightmare didn’t actually have a choice—but still…

No one had ever protected Matty. Not his mother, not his stepfather, and certainly not his stepfather’s men. But this demon would. This monstrous creature would stand by Matty’s side, keeping him from harm.

Nightmare tugged Matty’s head gently off his shoulder and cupped Matty’s face with his large, warm hands, stroking those slender fingers against Matty’s cheeks. “I will be your jagged pieces, Matteo. I will cut them into ribbons for you.”

Matty’s eyes were wet. He was pretty sure he was getting salty tears all over Nightmare’s fingers. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“Selfish pursuits,” Nightmare whispered, his white eyes beginning to glow.

“You want something from me?”

A nod.

“Something bad?”

No answer.

Matty sniffed back more tears. “Whatever it is, you can have it.”

Nightmare made a quiet tutting sound, like Matty was being unreasonable. “And if it’s your very soul, whole and complete and mine to devour?”

“You can have it,” Matty told him instantly. “It’s yours.”

“Foolish little human,” Nightmare whispered, soft and dark as one of his shadows.

And then he pressed his lips against Matty’s.

Other than the thank-you kiss Matty had given Nightmare in the foyer, Matty had been kissed only once before. It had been stolen by a vile man in the organization who’d reeked of stale beer and was found dead in a river the next day. He’d shoved his meaty tongue into Matty’s mouth and made him gag.

Nightmare’s kiss was nothing like that. His lips were thin but so warm, and his soft tongue swept gently against Matty’s mouth, coaxing it to open.

Matty let the demon in, his skin suddenly too tight and too hot. Nightmare smelled like smoke-laced fog, and secrets in the dark, and his touch never hurt, and Matty wanted more of it.

Matty leaned so far forward he fell off the edge of the couch, but Nightmare caught him, tugging Matty into his lap, never breaking the kiss.

It was a good position, because it meant Matty could wrap around him like a limpet, craning his neck up so Nightmare could keep kissing him. Nightmare was so much bigger than him—so much stronger—and it did something weird to Matty, made his belly swoop and all his blood rush south.

Safe in Nightmare’s lap, Matty let go of all his terrible thoughts and fears, let himself be reduced to nothing more than a warm and willing body grinding against Nightmare, mindlessly trying to get more pressure against his swelling dick.

Nightmare broke the kiss, still stroking Matty’s cheeks. Matty wasn’t crying anymore, so that was good. But he was… aching in a way he never had before. He was aching and hard and wanting.

“What do you desire, sweet?”

Matty knew the answer. “I want to feel good. Please. For once in my life, I want to feel only good .”

And Nightmare really was the best demon Matty could have ever hoped for, because taloned fingers left Matty’s cheek and trailed down to his sweats, working nimbly to slide them down and untangle them from Matty’s legs until he was nude from the waist down, still in Nightmare’s lap, his hard cock red and weepy with precum.