Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Riley
I lounge on a chaise in the library while I scratch Kit’s neck with one hand and flip the book with the other.
I’m as sleepy as she is, and she got a full night’s sleep.
My night was filled with the most addicting sex I’ve ever had, to the point where I felt like I couldn’t get enough.
Even after exhaustion hit me, I needed it at least one more time.
I fell asleep at some point after washing up in the tub (where we also had sex), and Torin must have carried me off to bed.
It went well beyond what the incubus I once slept with did to me.
It was intoxicating and I couldn’t get enough. His godly… whatever… somehow helped me keep up with him until my brain finally came back at one point, and I realized if I fucked him anymore, I was going to be miserable the next day.
Discovering that I’m dozing, I sit up, hoping that’ll keep me more awake and make me focus on something other than the god busy at work.
Kit glances over at Torin, who is still sitting on the floor where comfort is nonexistent. Then it dawns on me why Kit is staring at him when the two of us see that the fucker is over there chowing on a bar of chocolate.
“What are you eating?” I accuse.
He slowly looks over at me as he lowers the bar out of sight. “Eating? Just… vegetables. Yummy, yummy vegetables.”
“You have been hoarding candy?”
“I forgot it was in my coat pocket when I arrived.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “And then you hid it?”
Torin shakes his head. “I would never do that.”
I give him a come-hither motion and he hesitates, like he’s nervous, before crawling on his hands and knees over to me.
“Yes?”
“Candy.”
He grins at me but doesn’t hand it over. “What do I get in return?”
“To keep your dignity,” I say.
Torin leans forward, setting his elbows on the chaise as he beams, and I try not to get seduced by that look. Like how can a simple look pull me over to the dark side so quickly?
“Sounds scary,” he says, breaking off a square of the caramel chocolate bar and aiming it at my mouth.
I try to take it from him, but he refuses, and I’m hungry enough for something other than these horribly cooked vegetables that I open my mouth.
He slides the chocolate past my lips, and I swirl my tongue around his finger.
His eyebrows perk and as soon as I swallow this piece of chocolate, he eagerly gives me another.
What a sucker.
“It’s almost as if you like me,” I tease. “But a god of love doesn’t just like one person, right?”
Torin’s quiet for a moment before smiling at me. “Right. I’ve always shared my love with everyone.”
I just want more chocolate and am disappointed when there’s only one piece left. He aims it toward my mouth, but I push it back to him. “You can have it if you rub my back. I feel like I was plowed over by a car, but it was just a god with a big dick who refused to let me sleep.”
I roll onto my stomach and keep flipping through the book as he sits down on my thighs and starts rubbing the tight muscles in my back. “Ohhh, you should become a masseur. Maybe that’s how you’ll rise to stardom and gain followers.”
“Maybe,” he says, digging his thumb into an especially sore spot that feels amazing when he presses down.
“Right there,” I moan.
“Your moans are doing things to me… unspeakable things.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re prepared to speak about them,” I say, flipping the page a second before my head gets smashed down onto the chaise.
“What is this violence?” I bark as Torin practically crawls over my body, and even though my head is smashed down, Kit is able to look.
I see that the page I’d just flipped to has a sketch of someone with an inky stain covering most of their body.
Torin pulls it free from my hand as he gets up and begins pacing the room while he looks it over.
“Is it the right one?” I ask.
“It… is,” he replies, but he doesn’t sound overly thrilled.
“Did you make us spend days finding a book that’s not going to help?”
“I don’t know whether it’s going to help or not…
I barely understand it,” he mutters as he passes it to me.
I discover it’s a lot of spells and words with no explanation of what they mean or how to do them.
But the picture does reference a woman who seemed to have the same affliction as me, so it’s a start.
“Okay… we have something… we have something,” I say, feeling a sense of elation. There’s no guarantee this book will do anything, but it’s more than I ever thought I’d have.
“Just don’t get too excited. I don’t want you to end up disappointed.”
“Hey, it’s more than I’ve ever found before, and maybe it’ll give me something I can use. You never know.”
“Okay. Can we go back to your world now and eat?”
“We sure can,” I say, hurrying toward the door that leads out of the library. “Should we put things back first?”
“Nah, I’m starving.”
“I know you mentioned having to eat more now that you’re weaker, but could not eating hurt you?”
“No, I’ve gone weeks and even a month at one point with no food. And while it was extremely uncomfortable, it didn’t kill me. Now let’s go.” But before Torin heads over to the Door to go back to my world, he hesitates by the one next to the garden. “I’m just going to grab something. I’ll be fast.”
“Take your time,” I say, well aware he’s going to say goodbye to Quill.
I wander the hall a bit, not really wanting to go just yet. I don’t want to stay here forever, of course, but I feel like since this affliction hit me, it’s the first time I’ve just… been at peace. Though maybe it’s not this place but the very distracting god who has done that.
Torin trots down the hallway to catch up with me. “What are we going to eat? Pizza? Burritos?”
“Nah, somewhere else.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“It’s a secret.”
“I’m excited,” he says, patting himself down like he’s checking that he has everything—making me assume he’s already acquired his scythes that he seems to magic up whenever he needs them—before leading me off to the doorway.
As soon as we near the marble wall, the bricks that make up the wall glow and shift before the Door appears.
“Can we come back here again? I want to see more of your world.”
“Of course. I will do anything you’d like.”
“Not sure why,” I say as he takes my hand and drags me through the Door and back into the field we’d departed from days ago.
“This place seems so boring now,” I comment.
“We can call my place the love nest, if you’d like. We can go there and make passionate love any time you want,” he says with a wink.
I raise an eyebrow, confident that this man is going to break me and I’m going to be sex-hungry enough to enjoy it.
“Nope.”
Torin grins at me. “How sure are you on that?”
“Very.” Not very.
“How disappointing,” he mutters as I pull out my phone and see that it’s dead. “Are you going to use your magic box that you like to stare at and talk to very strangely?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because I used exactly zero of my brain cells to think about turning it off, so it’s very much dead.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss. I know you liked staring at it and then sometimes giggling… which did creep me out a little,” he says as he pulls out a knife and commences digging.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t have a shovel, so this will have to do,” he informs me. “Oh shit… do your people do fire pyres? I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“I’m not burying it!”
“You said it was dead.”
“I only need to recharge it! I just have to plug it in.”
Torin stands up and beams at me. “Ah… so it’s like how you’re recharging for the next time we have sex. I understand now. But do you also need to be recharged by ‘plugging something in’? Because I’m willing.”
“Kneel down.”
“And open my mouth? Gladly,” he says as he lowers to his knees.
I climb onto his back, grab him in a choke hold, and spur him in the sides while he stands up. “Start walking. We have a long way to go.”
Kit climbs onto his head and I even get to see her dig a few claws in on the way up.
And off he goes. He’s far too happy about all of this, likely because he doesn’t know that the nearest sign of civilization is about ten miles down the road.
“Such a pleasant day,” he says cheerfully. “Nothing more pleasant than you on my back, the sun in my face, and your cute little familiar peeling my scalp open.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I promise as I pull her off and put her on my shoulder. She is displeased by this and aims for his head again. “Don’t maim him, we need him to walk ten miles for us first.”
“And then she can maim me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. You’re just refreshing and delightful, Riley. In my thousand years of life, I can confidently say I’ve never met anyone like you. Most people treated me with so much respect and timidness. Or they flattered me and did everything I asked, just to gain my attention. And then there’s you.”
“Then there’s me,” I repeat as I crack open the book and have to kind of put it in front of his face so Kit can stare at it.
It’s really quite awkward, but it’s keeping me from having to walk, so I’m game.
I begin to read, extremely interested in what’s inside it.
All the while, my pack mule merrily walks down the road without a care in the world that I’m exploiting him.
After making it about six miles down the desolate road, he perks up.
“I hear one of those testicle monsters,” he says.
“Testicle monsters… oh, a car? I guess we could wave it down. There’s like a fifty-fifty chance they’re a serial killer, but I think a god, a familiar, and whatever magic I have at the moment can take them on, right?”
“I will ask them,” he says before damn near throwing himself—and me since I’m still on his back like a sophisticated adult—in front of the car. The driver slams on the brakes as I realize that maybe I should have told him how to wave down a car instead of nearly killing everyone involved.