Page 16 of Wicked (Dark Delights #5)

“Killed what?” Hawley asked, circling in front of him. Isaac dared to glance up. There was a dark gleam in Hawley’s eyes, a twitch to his tense mouth.

Isaac swallowed, his throat clicking dryly. He’d been denied dinner in favor of punishment, and the day’s training had left him uncomfortably parched.

“I waited until after dark and snuck out to the field nearby. There was a raccoon there in the grass. I killed it, cut it open and spread its blood and intestines on the ground. And then…” He’d laid the trap, and something had come to inspect it, just like he wanted.

“And then?” Hawley prompted sternly.

Isaac bowed his head. “A demon came.”

It had been the most exhilarating moment of his life.

The demon was a black-skinned thing with teeth like a shark.

It took every ounce of training he possessed, but he brought it down.

Stabbing it in the chest and hearing its banshee cry of pain had felt like a key slotting into place.

He could do this; he was good at this. Before it could decay, he’d cut it open from stem to stern and watched the black blood leak out, the strange organs shrivel and turn to dust. After that, with the restlessness in his marrow sated, he’d gone back to his dorm and slept like the dead.

No amount of punishment could make him regret that feeling of satisfaction.

Hawley circled around him, the short leather whip dangling by his legs. “You stole a holy weapon from the armory.”

The whip scored across his back, and Isaac clenched his teeth.

“You snuck out after hours.”

It crashed against him a second time, and his hands tightened into fists in his lap.

“You killed one of God’s creations and put yourself in danger.”

The third snap of the whip, right across the center of his back, drew an involuntary whimper from him.

“You haven’t yet graduated! You are not a field agent! You’re only fourteen years old!”

A hit punctuated each of those statements, and Isaac was certain blood was trickling down his back. His labored breaths filled the air, and he struggled to sit still. Sometimes he liked pain, but this was gratuitous in all the wrong ways.

“You disobeyed!” Hawley roared, and three more strikes landed hard across Isaac’s back.

He caught himself with his hands, a dry sound tearing from his throat.

No more hits followed, and he focused his attention on the trembling of his arms rather than the stinging wounds on his back.

Hawley’s black shoes appeared in his periphery, circling around to his front, and fingers carded firmly into his hair, tugging insistently until Isaac sat back on his heels and looked up the doughy plane of Hawley’s body to meet his eyes. Only then did Hawley’s grip gentle .

“You must obey. You cannot kill indiscriminately, nor without permission .” Hawley’s brown eyes looked black in the candlelight, sharp with something Isaac couldn’t identify but which left something unpleasant squirming in his gut.

It took him a moment to find his voice. “Yes, Father Hawley.”

And then, a new voice crooned from the darkness, “Oh, killer. This is what you’ve been hiding?”

What? No. He couldn’t be here. He had to erase this, make it go away. He didn’t want the demon to see .

With effort, the scene faded. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting everything around him drift away like smoke. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting in the chair in the storage room.

But it wasn’t Shadrach standing before him.

It was Father Hawley. His bald head gleamed in the ugly fluorescent light.

His mouth twisted in disgust as he raised the whip.

Panic zipped through Isaac. His hands were tied.

Wait, no, he didn’t want this. He’d lost control of the dream somehow. He braced himself for the impact ? —

“No, killer,” Shadrach’s smooth voice said. Gentle hands cradled his face. “Time to wake up.”

Isaac woke with a gasp. The hands on his face were searingly real. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him like that, and he flinched away from it reflexively.

Shadrach was kneeling over him, and he sat up hastily, pressing his back against the brick wall and eyeing the demon distrustfully.

“I told you not to enter my dreams again,” he croaked.

The backache from sleeping on the tile was rapidly fading, and a distant part of his mind marveled at the wonders of demon blood while worriedly wondering how long it lasted.

He couldn’t imagine how Hawley would react if he whipped Isaac’s back only to watch it heal before his eyes.

“Well, you should’ve been more forthcoming while you were awake. I have to get answers somehow. You only have yourself to blame.” Shadrach’s black eyes glittered with softness, belying the glib tone. “Do you want to… talk about it?” He squinted. “That’s a thing humans do, right?”

Isaac’s lip curled in distaste. “Other humans, maybe.”

Shadrach snorted, patting him on the leg, and Isaac tried to ignore the sparks that shot under his skin at the touch. “I woke you for a reason—besides the dream.”

“Oh?”

Shadrach smiled, devastatingly and effortlessly handsome. “I thought you might like a shower.”

Isaac was sure his hope reflected in his eyes. “Really? Where? How?”

He jerked his head. “There’s a shower here.”

“ Here ?” What kind of a skating rink had a shower? Wasn’t this the kind of place where kids had birthday parties?

Shadrach sniggered. “Yeah. When they remodeled the bathroom, they had a few showers put in. Sometimes they get dirty on patrol, so they’ll shower here when they get back.”

A shower would be phenomenal. Isaac’s eyes slid to the door. “What about the others? They won’t mind you letting me out?”

“They’re not here,” Shadrach said, standing smoothly. “I finally convinced them all to take a break and go home. Grabbed you some spare clothes they keep here—you look about Luke’s size, so you can thank him for the sweats and tee later. What do you say?”

Isaac stood. “I think hell yeah.”

He’d outsmarted Shadrach once. If he was the only one here, maybe Isaac could get away from him and make a break for it.

But he forgot all about seeking an escape when they reached the bathroom.

Cream-colored tile covered the floor and three-quarters of the walls.

There were three toilet stalls, four urinals, and three showers.

All the faucets gleamed, and the room still smelled faintly of fresh paint.

Each shower had a white curtain pulled aside, giving him a view of the dressing space and the shower further in.

“I have one rule,” Shadrach said as he led Isaac to the showers.

“Oh?”

“I don’t trust you as far as I can spit, so you have to leave this open.” He tugged the curtain for emphasis. “I want to keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t try to rip off the shower-head and beat me with it.”

Isaac wanted to give a dismissive scoff, because he was used to showering with others and being naked should be no big deal, but this wouldn’t be two soldiers politely ignoring each other while showering in the same vicinity.

This was Shadrach, the painfully attractive demon who seemed born from Isaac’s darkest fantasies, fully clothed and watching Isaac shower.

Showing weakness would only make things worse, so he steeled his spine and shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. Hope the water pressure is good.” He brushed past Shadrach with all the bravado he could muster, holding his breath so he wouldn’t catch a whiff of his intoxicating black cherry scent .

A neat set of clothing and a towel was piled on the wooden bench inside the dressing area.

The weight of Shadrach’s gaze sent goosebumps rising across his skin, and he kept his eyes firmly trained on the shower ahead of him as he stripped out of his dirty clothing and kicked his sneakers off.

He left the clothes in a pile on the floor, his face burning, and stepped over the lip in the tile and into the shower, twisting the knobs quickly so he had something to focus on besides the relentless presence behind him.

Shadrach had a gravitational pull, and not reacting took all his mental fortitude.

He turned the water as hot as he could stand it.

The water pressure was indeed good, and he turned sideways, angling his shoulders under the water and groaning as the pounding water massaged his weary body.

For a moment, he forgot he was being watched as he tipped his head back and let the water cascade over his face and hair.

On the wall under the shower-head, about the height of his shoulder, a stainless steel shelf held a bar of soap and a generic bottle of shampoo.

With the weight of Shadrach’s gaze raking across his back, Isaac reached for the shampoo, lathering a generous amount into his hair and scrubbing his scalp for a long, luxurious amount of time.

Just because he could. When he stuck his head under the water, tilting from side to side to make sure he washed away all the suds from around his ears, he caught a glimpse of Shadrach’s looming figure behind him.

He’d moved closer.

Heat burned through Isaac. He licked the water from his lips and reached for the soap next.

His movements were slow and measured, lathering up the bar and gliding it over his skin.

Down his neck, over his shoulders and chest, under his arms. Molten desire pooled in his gut as he grazed the hardened buds of his nipples and slipped down his stomach.

He tried to muster some annoyance at his own body’s reaction, but after all the discomfort of the last couple of days, everything about this moment felt divine.

He didn’t care that his cock was filling like it had a mind of its own.