Chapter 26
Lynx
Being a demon is tiresome at times. But being a demon stuck in a manor with a ghost who has an attitude might be worse.
Even more of a nightmare is when we hear the chattering of voices downstairs while we sit in awkward quietness until one of us comes up with a plan to stop the next Tor’Oth that could potentially appear.
My right eye twitches as I glare at the door.
There are more people now than the last time they were here—a lot more.
What the fuck do they think they’re doing?
Breaking and entering—a new phrase I learned—is a crime, is it not?
At least that’s what Sable has been grumbling about since the first person arrived.
She’s lying on her front on the moth-eaten mattress, flicking through the pages of the grimoire like she understands what the words mean.
I’ve studied the thing over and over, but she still insists on looking as if she has any knowledge about magic.
Her knees are bent, feet hanging in the air, and my gaze keeps landing on her ass cheeks peeking out from under the material of her shorts.
She’s forever complaining about being cold—the fact she has minimal clothing on tells me she wants attention.
It’s working.
I shift in my armchair beside the bed, twisting the wooden stake between my fingers. The weapon won’t do much to a Tor’Oth, but it’s sure as shit better than nothing.
I’m irritated. Every time she speaks about a spell to break our everlasting link and get me out of here, I grip the arms of the chair. Yes, we should be looking into it, but I’m more focused on her and the way she keeps glancing at me.
Sable looks at the door when more voices echo up and down the corridor. “Those assholes are partying again.”
Why else would they be here? But I also hope those asshole officers don’t show, because I have a headache coming on, and I’ve not had one of those since I was human.
My shoulders slouch on an annoyed breath as giggling echoes up to the second floor—who even laughs that loud?
Great. So the humans are back to party again and everything between us two is awkward—the atmosphere is tense, and I want her to dare me to kiss her again. Or just do it of my own accord. I haven’t decided on my next course of action, considering I—unfortunately—care for the girl I murdered.
A feeling that probably isn’t reciprocated.
Besides, she said our sex was mindless.
I inwardly scoff at the ridiculousness of the word. If that was the case, why the fuck did she dare me to kiss her?
Asking her outright if she meant what she said seems childish and beneath me, but I also need to know. There’s a large possibility of this being one-sided, and if that really is the case, I need to cut myself off from Sable. I’d prefer to do it sooner rather than later.
Imagine this becoming unrequited love? Not that I could ever love her and expect to get anything in return. The reason her body is rotting in the soil of the manor’s forest is because of me.
I’m a demon. I’m incapable of love. All I know is destruction and hate. What I’m feeling toward her is—fuck, I don’t know what to call it.
“Can you read this?” she asks, pulling me from my internal spiral of questioning what the fuck is going on here. “This page here.”
I sigh and get to my feet, leaning over her on the bed to see. “Nope,” I lie because a part of me doesn’t want to translate. “Can’t read Latin.”
“You told me you could. A bit at least.”
Instead of thinking of another lie, I raise a brow. “The entire book is in this language. How did you manage to even summon me with it?”
She avoids my question. “If I unsummon you, it’ll break your curse. Then all I need to do is break mine. Somehow.”
I doubt the author of the grimoire will be happy with her ridiculous vocabulary. Unsummoning sounds like it should be illegal to speak aloud.
She flips another page then yanks me down onto the bed beside her so we’re both on our fronts as she skims some more.
“There must be something to send you back.”
The annoying part of me is hurt. My brows rise. “You’re still in a hurry to banish me from your life?”
“Don’t you want to go home?”
“Hell isn’t my home. It was my prison. I’m not going back.”
Sable chews her lip. “Maybe I can summon another demon who knows how to break the curse?”
I grab the book and slam it closed. “That’s enough.”
“Hey!” she yells, attempting to grab it back from me. I lift it above my head. “At least I’m trying to do something before one of us permanently dies.”
“The last time you tried to do the summoning spell, Tidus unfortunately graced us with his presence. Do it again and it’s likely to be something far less hyper and far more vicious.”
“It’s my sister’s book.”
I shrug.
Sable hovers above me as I hold the grimoire out of reach. Humor lights her eyes as she lets out an irritated huff that curls her lips into a coy smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re insufferable?”
There’s a tense silence, our gazes stunned into stillness, and my eyes drop to her mouth. She smiles, and my heart stops at how much I don’t deserve a single second of this. Her. Any of these moments.
“Has anyone ever told you your lips look good when they curve like that?” I ask, reaching up and tucking hair behind her ear despite how much I like that it’s curtaining our faces, hiding us from the world.
She arches a brow, cheeks tinting bright red. “It depends. Are you implying you like my smile, demon?”
“Maybe.”
She hums, face flaming red even though she’s dead. I mimic the sound, and then there’s silence again, filled by the echo of voices and music.
She’s a liar if she thinks what happened between us was mindless. She’s gullible if she believes I think it was just sex. There’s something powerful between us. Call it fate. Call it a nightmare. Whatever it is, it’s ours. The sooner she realizes it, the better.
Fuck it.
I lean closer and kiss her.
When her lips part, inviting me to push my tongue against hers, I groan and pull her down to me, so her body presses to mine. She’s kissing me back, and there’s no anger or dare or anything in between.
The first time we kissed, I’ll gladly admit I was a pit of nerves because I wanted it so badly and never knew if she truly felt the same way.
Now I know. Sable is dying for this just as much as I am.
Her heart is likely near restarting, her pulse will be racing, and she’ll be growing more and more turned on.
She tastes like mine. Her little whimper against my mouth is like my own prayer—she’s my saving grace, the one who’ll pull me out of the pits of Hell.
Her touch and the way her fingers explore my body has me tensing and dragging my mouth to her throat, marking the skin with each suck and bite.
I bring my mouth back to hers, pausing as I stare up at her.
Beautiful. Perfect. Smart.
A pure soul that belongs to me.
“Being stuck here for eternity with you doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.”
Her plump lips part as she stares at me, opening and closing her mouth like she’s at a loss for words. I can hardly believe what I said, yet here we are. It’s all out in the open now.
The delicate line of her throat bobs as she says, just above a whisper, like she’s worried I might be scared away, “Careful, Lincoln. You almost sound romantic.”
“Lynx,” I correct, trying to ignore the vibrations in my chest from how hard my demonic black heart beats. “I want you to call me Lynx.”
She hesitates before slowly leaning down, like she’s giving me a chance to run away. I’m too far gone for that though. For better or worse, I’m stuck here. Location and threat of death aside, I don’t hate my life.
Her lips skim my own, whispering my name then gasping as I claim them. My tongue slips into her mouth, and she sucks on it, nipping my bottom lip, deepening the kiss as her fingers tangle in my hair.
Sable’s other hand lowers between us and pulls at my waistband, more demanding this time. She dips beneath the material, and I groan against her mouth as she wraps her fingers around me, stroking me and matching the tempo of our tongues.
But then her hand pulls free, and she sits up when we hear something smashing—presumably a window.
“I’m going to kill them,” she growls, glaring at the door.
I want to kill them too, but that might bring more cops here, and that’s the last thing we need.
“They’ll get bored in a few hours and leave,” I tell her, holding her by the hips. It’s a lie. They won’t leave until the sun comes up, like last time. “Entertain me until then.”
“No.”
My frown dips. No? What the fuck does she mean by “no”?
The music is turned up, and the next thing we hear is the smashing of what I assume is another window.
Sable bristles, but I tighten my grip on her before she can take herself down there and attempt to smash someone’s face in.
“Don’t.” The word is firm. “They’ll leave in a few hours.”
She tries yanking herself out of my hold. “I’m not letting them wreck my house!”
Before I can spin us so I’m pinning her beneath me to keep her still, she rips my hands from her waist and climbs off me, marching on a warpath to the door—her hips swinging and just begging to be gripped.
I sigh and rise from the bed to follow her before she takes a page out of a demon’s book and kills someone.
She descends the steps two at a time then hides herself to the side, out of view, as if she’s forgotten they can’t see her, and peers into the sitting room filled with humans and bookshelves in dire need of dusting and smashed, lopsided frames containing photos of Sable and her sister.
“Ugh. They have their muddy shoes on the love seat. I’m going to snap their shins.”
Fighting a laugh, I lean into her. “You know you’re invisible to them, right? And there’s no need to whisper. They can’t hear you.”
“Shut it.”
I cross my arms and lean against the wall beside her. “We could always go upstairs and pretend we didn’t see them and, you know, do stuff?”
“Do what stuff?” She’s not even looking at me.