3. Chapter 3
Imelt into the bathtub like a pat of cold butter in a hot pan. My skin flushes beneath the stinging water, just shy of scalding. As I slowly acclimate, the heat soaks into my muscles, and holy sweet bliss, I groan at the fluttering spasms of tight muscles contracting before they release. The shudders start in my legs and feet and move up my lower back to my shoulders and neck. Tension seeps away, and between the heat and the oil, it’s not long until I’m as soft and slippery as an overcooked noodle.
I breathe deeply, inhaling the decadent aroma of rose petals and nightbloom oil, and wonder at the effort Samite has gone to just for me. He was right, of course. I am enjoying this. I love a hot bath. Who doesn’t? It’s just that sometimes I can’t seem to shake the guilt. I grew up differently from Samite. My parents worked hard and made do with very little. They stretched everything they brought home, making it go twice as far. It’s a practical way to survive but an exhausting way to live.
When I left home, I did alright for myself. As a professional chef working in fine dining, I dipped my toes in the world of indulgence and luxury, but nothing like the life I have now with Samite. Sometimes, it still feels wrong.
But perhaps not as wrong as ignoring this gorgeous tower of chocolates. It calls to me, the assortment of truffles, bonbons, pralines, and nougats. All of them shine with the glossy finish of tempered chocolate and a tantalizing sheen of luster dust. I nibble at my bottom lip as my fingers wiggle above the tower of confections. It’s so hard to choose when they’re all so beautiful.
I select a gold-flecked bonbon and pop it in my mouth whole. My teeth crunch through the snappy chocolate shell, sinking into a rich dark chocolate ganache. Notes of ripe raspberries and delicate orange blossom melt like velvet on my palate, and I let out an appreciative sigh at the lovely balance of bitter, sweet, tart, and floral. Fuck me, it’s perfect.
My eyes drift toward the fireplace, a present from my demon husband who knows exactly how I feel about fire. My heart squeezes. He couldn’t have picked a more perfect gift. I love it even if it feels like too much.
My gaze catches on the jumping flames, and off I go, slipping into a peaceful, meditative state. I float away for what feels like only a moment before I hear my name.
“Sofia.” Samite is calling me from far away, and yet I can feel his breath behind my ear. “Come back, my love,” he whispers as his lips trail soft kisses down my neck.
I slide back into my body, and turning my head, I’m greeted by my favorite smile in the whole world. “I think I might have over-poached you,” he says, sounding both delighted and smug as he kisses the tip of my nose. I nuzzle my face against his.
“That’s a fireable offense,” I say, and he laughs. I take his offered hand and let him help me out of my bath. I sigh my way into a pillowy robe, and he leads me down the hall.
“Prepare yourself,” he says as we approach the door to our bedroom. I don’t. One, because I don’t know what that means, and two, because I’m too relaxed to care.
The door swings open, and I gasp. My hands fly to my mouth, and like a kite caught by the wind, I’m pulled into the room by the most beautiful sight I’ve ever beheld. Everywhere I look, there are flame-filled glass orbs, hundreds of them, floating in the air overhead, filling the entire room. Above the bed, they’re clustered tighter, forming a brilliantly glowing canopy that drapes all four sides.
“How?” It’s the only word my mind can form.
“A little blown glass, some tinsel, a bit of chemistry, and a touch of very expensive and very rare fire magic to heighten the experience.” He turns to give me a mischievous grin.
“Fire magic?” My pulse quickens.
“You did say you were open to trying something a little more adventurous. I’ve procured us a bit of prepared magic. Are you still game?” he asks.
“Oh yes, most definitely,” I answer as a thrill runs through my body. There’s so much more to fire than heat. There’s a whole world of magic I’ve never experienced. My heart flutters in eager anticipation.
He grins and, looking back to the canopy, he asks, “Does it call to you?” There’s a breathy quality to his voice that tells me he feels the same wonder I do.
“It does,” I say, and as my gaze starts to go soft and unfocused, I feel my feet drifting towards the bed. Samite steps into view, blocking my path.
“Sofia, are you with me?” he asks.
I blink, and my eyes refocus on his face. I rest a palm against his chest and smile. “Of course I’m here.”
“When you slip into the fire, may I touch you?”
I run my fingers over his jaw. “As much as you please, mi esposo. My body is yours.”
He frowns at my answer, and I laugh. I know what he wants to hear.
“All of me, Samite. You have all of me, tonight and always. I trust you, mi amor. Mi cielo. Mi corazón.” I kiss him lightly after each term of endearment, and on the last, he catches the sides of my face in cupped hands, claiming my mouth in a hungry kiss. His sharp teeth graze the pout of my lip. My tongue darts out, and he opens for me, welcoming me in with a sweep of his tongue.
“You won’t need this,” he says, nudging my robe off my shoulders. It drops and pools at my feet.
“And you don’t need your shirt or your pants,” I say. My fingers fly down the row of buttons from his collar to his zipper, fast and efficient because I know his buttons well. Samite, as always, is gratifyingly quick to strip. There’s not a shy bone in his body, though I have to smile when he takes a moment to neatly fold his clothes and crosses the room to set them on the dresser. He’s an adorable mix of immodest and fastidious.
When he turns, standing before me naked and proud, the hundreds of tiny fires fade from my awareness. I see only him, my eager and glorious demon husband, broad in the shoulders, slim in the hips, strong all over. My mouth waters as my eyes run hot trails over his dark red skin, so sinfully smooth and inviting.
When my gaze rises to meet his, I catch the first fine wisps of smoke escaping from the corners of his eyes, a mark of his arousal. “You are beautiful, Sofia,” he murmurs, and the plumes become thicker, floating up to form a dark halo around his horns. My skin flushes hot, and my pulse throbs achingly between my thighs. When Samite’s eyes smoke for me, I unravel for him. I run at him, and he catches me around the hips as I leap into his arms. My legs wrap around his waist, and my mouth finds his. I would eat him alive if I wasn’t so determined to keep him.
He carries me towards the bed, fingers biting into my cheeks, as he murmurs lurid promises into my mouth.
“I’m going to seduce you with fire, my wife. Your mind will float while your body melts in my hands. You’ll spend the night writhing beneath me, lost in pleasure. When the firebliss takes you, so will I, in every way imaginable.” My body quivers over every word, and my breath comes in small shudders.
“Yes,” I breathe. My fingernails dig into his shoulders, and my toes clench. I want this so desperately, my head swims with it.
I hear the clink of glass behind me and look to see him parting the flickering canopy. He drops me onto the bed, and just as I’m bouncing down, my eyes catch on the window curtain. It’s not completely drawn. There’s an open strip, maybe a foot wide. A thought drifts across my mind: I wonder if someone is watching us. Innocuous at first, but then the city lights blink as if to confirm we have an audience. The lusty fog in my brain lifts and a chill runs over my skin.
“What’s wrong?” Samite asks. His tongue flicks the air, and I know he’s tasting fear. It’s an annoying ability, and stubbornly, I try to deny it.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I insist.
“Sofia,” he captures my chin and lifts my face to his, searching it for answers.
“Will you close the curtains?” I ask. His brow twists with unasked questions. He knows I’m not that shy, or at least I wasn’t before I poisoned myself with opinions I can’t seem to forget. A brunette lobster in chef’s whites, he called me. Do I really go that red in the face?
Samite does as I ask, and when he returns, he tastes the air again. Apparently, he’s satisfied with whatever it tells him because he quickly claims my mouth, palms my breast, and it’s not long until his hands, coupled with the warm glow of the fire, root me back in this moment.
He plants his knees between my thighs, nudging them apart. “I want to see every part of you,” he murmurs. My eyes dart to the window to confirm what I already know. The curtain is closed. Samite alone can look all he wants.
He sits back on his heels between my spread legs and takes a long moment to take me in with his smoking eyes. I start to squirm, eager for his touch, and he rests a hand on my knee. “Be still,” he says, then licking his lips, he snaps his fingers. We’re surrounded by fire, but my eyes are instantly attracted to his hand. The tips of all five fingers light like candles. He lowers the back of his hand to my skin, resting it on my belly. “Be very still for me,” he says. I shudder beneath his touch, my breath going shallow. His other hand slips between my legs, and he slides the pads of his fingers up and down my folds until I start to pant and flush warm.
He watches me closely, tongue flicking the air as he glides the back of his fire-lit hand over my skin, soft as a feather. His touch sends a flutter of trembles racing over my naked body. From my belly, he glides up to my chest and then out to my shoulder. The flames are mere millimeters from my skin. I can feel the warmth of each individual flame like a trail of hot kisses.
With his other hand, he works a finger inside of me, pumping it slowly in and out. My hips start to roll.
“Be still,” he says again, but there’s a teasing smile on his face. He knows I couldn’t stop my hips if I wanted to, not with the way he’s working me. A second finger joins his first, and as he pushes deeper, he taps me in just the right spot. My walls squeeze. He keeps up his strokes, and my eyelids flutter with an arousal that’s equal parts pleasurable and hypnotic.
His fire-lit hand slides from my right side to my left, and I barely register the fact that it moves across my scars, a patchwork of burns from my childhood. I hid them from Samite when we first met. Now, I trust him with every part of me. His is the one gaze I will never shrink from.
His thumb rubs a circle over my clit, gently at first, then with more pressure until my breath is catching, and still his hand of hot kisses trails all over my body, luring me into a delightful delirium. “Come for me,” he whispers.
“I need your cock inside me,” I reply.
My head is swimming, but I’m not floating, not yet. So, when he stops touching me, I’m aware of it instantly. My head pops up from the bed, and I see that Samite’s hands are resting on his thighs, and his head is tilted back. I follow his gaze up to the fiery canopy. I catch on a flame and drift out of my body almost instantly, but this time, I’m not alone. I’m aware of Samite’s presence, more than aware. It pulls at me more strongly than the flame and all my attention fixes on him.
It must be a trick of the light or an altered state I’ve drifted into, but as I stare at him, I swear his body lights from within, an ethereal flame flickering between brilliant sparks and deep shadows. Everything dances except for his eyes. They are two dark voids billowing clouds of black smoke that circles like an inky halo over his head. I nearly come at the sight of him. I can hardly breathe.
He moves with the slow grace of a cat. Crawling up the bed, he lowers his fire-filled body over me. The mattress sinks where his elbows come to rest, and my hips flex under the weight of him settling snugly between my thighs. His cock presses at my entrance, and I lift my hips in invitation.
“Are you with me, Sofia?” he asks, and this time I know he means here inside the flame. I didn’t know this was a place we could share, the dancing, leaping void within the fire.
“Si, mi amor. Aquí estoy.”Yes, my love, I whisper, staring into his black-void eyes. I am here. Wherever here is.
“I knew it,” he murmurs and kisses my lips, his tongue swiping into my mouth with eager and possessive roughness. Before I can ask what he knew, his hips roll forward, and he fills me with one deep thrust. I groan out in pleasure, and digging in my heels, I match the roll of my hips to the rhythm of his drive. He’s slow and steady at first, sinking us deeper with each rock of his hips down into the mattress until it feels like we’re gliding straight through the silken sheets on our way to someplace else.
He nips at my jaw and breathes my name against my cheek as his thrusts quicken. “Stay with me,” he entreats as if I would wish to be anywhere else but right here, right now with him. We’re beyond the sheets now, gliding into blinding bright patches and then drifting into shadows. Our bedroom is far away, and yet I see the details of it out of the corner of my eye. The posts of our bed, the Italian glass lamp on the side table.
“I’m here.” My nails scratch up his back as I pull him tighter to me until I feel the rasp of his beard scratching at my neck. His rocking grows more frantic. Sweat prickles across my skin. My breath clouds like steam. Everything around us is a swirling blur. He’s the only thing solid and steady. The hot slap of him builds in intensity, a drum beat rushing me towards release. My thighs clench, and my teeth find his shoulder. I bite down at the first tiny spasms. I’m almost there.
“Espérame,”he whispers into my ear. Wait for me he asks, but his pronunciation is perfect, and it has the opposite effect, pushing me closer to the edge. I bite down on my bottom lip and try not to come, but then he repositions and hits me someplace new, and there’s no hope. Rolling wave after wave of squeezing shudders reverberates from my center out over my entire body. There’s singing in my ears. Bursts of light rain down on us, somehow an echo of my inner throbbing. And that’s when I feel the growl in his belly that turns into a moan as it travels up his throat. He presses his open mouth against my neck as he fists my hair with both hands. “Sofia,” he groans out my name and erupts in a series of short, powerful thrusts. My walls continue to clamp onto him as he comes, pulsing and squeezing so hard that all I can do is gasp and shudder at the overwhelming pleasure.
We spin freely for a while, with only the occasional aftershock running through us. There is no up or down, only fire and our tangled limbs lacing us together.
“Why didn’t you tell me it could be like this?” I ask when I finally settle into myself again. I run my fingers over his lips.
“I wasn’t certain the fire magic would work for you,” he says, and I know he means because I’m human. “There was only one way to find out.” Capturing my hand, he presses a kiss into my palm.
“I’d love to do that again,” I breathe out on a wistful sigh.
“We’re going to, wife,” he says, kissing my eyelids. “There’ll be no sleep for you tonight.”
Night spills over into morning. We have nowhere to be, but we both know we should be figuring out how we’re going to fix the halo so we can reopen Ollas Encendidas by tomorrow evening, which is Valentine’s Day for the rest of the world. Neither of us brings it up, an unspoken agreement to ignore our problems for as long as we can.
The fire orbs burn themselves out by early afternoon, and with them goes the last of the fire magic that connected us in that wondrous place inside the flame.
“Is it a real place?” I ask as I drowsily nuzzle into his neck.
He doesn’t know. “My mother used to call it the Soul’s Abyss, but I think it’s in the mind, a meditative place that only fire can awaken.”
“In the mind,” I muse, tapping my chin. “So, then, were we in my head or yours?” I ask with a grin.
“Yours,” he answers with a firm nod of his chin.
“How do you know?” I ask with a disbelieving scoff.
“It tasted like you.”
“I don’t think that’s a real answer,” I say, my eyes narrowing suspiciously. He’s teasing. He has to be.
He gives me a lopsided smile. “I know what I know.”
We eat and sleep and spend the evening in restful silence. The crackle of a fireplace, the whistle of a kettle, and little else. But every now and then, I slip away from Samite. I take my phone into the bathroom, and hands shaking, I read a new message from Magleon.
The black-horned demon is not easily shrugged off. Refusal after refusal, and each time he comes back with a more tempting offer. I should ignore him, delete his messages and block his number, but it feels impossible. I know he’s manipulating the situation and me, but even knowing that, I feel powerless to disengage. From the moment I sat down across from him, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling I’ve swallowed a hook.
“What’s the one thing you can’t buy?” he asked me. Only later did I realize he was asking me to name something I couldn’t afford, something he could give me that Samite couldn’t.
“Love,” I answered, stupidly in retrospect.
“Love?” he frowned. “You can’t buy love?” he scoffed at me from across the table. “Another human cliché that entirely misses the point of existence. The only thing worth buying is love. If you don’t love what you buy and buy what you love, you’re wasting your money and your love. This place, for example. You loved your restaurant enough to buy it, didn’t you?”
“We’re renting.” Most restaurants lease space. It’s a common practice.
“Well, there you have it. The truer statement would be ‘you can’t lease love.’” He leaned back into his seat, arms spreading as if to declare his point made. “That was an unfortunate mistake. What others have you made? Why is this marvelous restaurant going under?”
“We’re not going under. We’re fine,” I insist.
“Lie to yourself if you want, but don’t lie to the person who can save you. Just think what it would do to you if this place were to fold. What it would do to Samite.”
Damn him.
When I come out of the bathroom, Samite is on the couch. “We need to figure out how to get the halo working,” I say, loath to pop our happy bubble, but time is of the essence.
“Already on it. I called the repairman this morning. He’s there now.”
An oppressive weight lifts off my shoulders, and I float to the couch. I shove my phone into the pillows before curling up next to my husband, light and free. “Thank you.” I peck him on the cheek. We’re going to be fine.
Around seven, I wander into the kitchen and start dreaming up plans for dinner. Samite follows me a few minutes later. “Sofia.” I hear the strain in his voice before I turn to see it written all over his face. “He can’t fix the halo. We need three new fans.”
“Three? Only two went out.”
“When he was testing the system, one of the others started throwing sparks. He recommends replacing all five, but three would get us operational.”
Except we both know we can’t get three. We can’t get one. When we had a custom hood built for the restaurant, it felt like such a good idea, a statement piece. Little did we know the problems the slim profile and continuous curve would cause us down the line. Nothing off the shelf fits, and even if the original manufacturer’s parts weren’t on backorder, we know they’re faulty. Tearing the whole thing out and installing a new system would require a city permit, a route we probably should have taken, but it’s too late now. Even if we filed today, we’d be approved in a month or two at the earliest.
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
“There’s nothing else we can do,” he says, swallowing hard.
“What happens if we don’t open tomorrow?” He knows what I’m asking.
“Then we had a good run,” he says softly, his throat constricting on the last word.
“I don’t want to close,” I say, and tears well up in my eyes.
“Neither do I, but it’s not exactly a surprise, is it? We both knew I’d sink this ship, eventually.” His voice sounds broken, and whatever’s happening behind his black eyes, I’ve never seen it before. I hate it. This is not Samite’s fault. He took my failed dream and brought it to life. It’s better than I could have ever imagined because of him. And we’re not going to let it sink now.
“Get dressed,” I tell him. He startles and asks where we’re going. We’re going to talk to Magleon. There’s no other choice, but what I say is, “You’ll find out when we get there.” I should probably try to explain the offer on the table and prepare him for the conversation we’re about to have, but all I can think is that we have to go right now.
The black-horned demon can make his offer directly to Samite, and if my husband is willing to pay the price, then Ollas Encendidas will be saved. If not, at least we tried.