Chapter 14
Every ten minutes we invent a new worst-case scenario and draft a contingency for it. Then a contingency for the contingency.
By hour two, the floor looks like the blueprint of a particularly deranged architect.
By hour three, we’re starving.
We order Tito Rad’s, because as it turns out, Batibat has learned how to open the fridge. She has eaten all my cheese. When I accuse her, she blinks slowly at me like, at least I closed it.
It’s during the third hour—while I’m pretending to listen to Jonah explain the structural weaknesses of brownstone stairwells—that I start to feel something else.
Batibat is sprawled across Jonah’s lap like she’s the demon queen of the universe, purring like a small engine.
Jonah’s large hands move over her back in slow, absent strokes, smoothing the sleek black fur from shoulders to tail, over and over again.
His fingers flex as he scratches behind her ears, then trails down her spine with patient precision.
I glare at her. That is my spot, goddamn it.
And when his thumb hooks lightly at the base of her neck and she arches into him, I can’t help myself—I glance up at his face.
He’s focused, soft around the edges, mouth curved faintly as he murmurs something to her under his breath. The lamplight catches along his cheekbone, down the line of his throat. A curl falls slightly into his eyes, and he pushes it back haphazardly.
He smirks. He knows what he’s doing.
“Careful, Mayari,” he murmurs.
“What?” I huff.
“You forget that I can sense these things,” he drawls, hand still moving over my demon cat’s back. “Your jealousy has grown exponentially with each minute this cat sits in my lap.”
“It’s my lap,” I cry. I might even stomp my foot. “And if you can feel it, why don’t you suck it out?” At least something would get sucked around here.
“Because,” he says, “it’s not rot. Not on you, anyway. Because you would rather die than let any sort of harm come to this cat.”
Both she and I harrumph.
“You don’t know me,” I grumble. “You’ve only known me for seventy-two hours.”
He stares at me, eyes dimly illuminated by the lamps around my apartment.
Something flits across his face before the tip of his mouth curls up in a way that could only be described as evil or demon-like.
“We should fix that immediately.” Jonah gently places Batibat on the ground and stands, outstretching his hand. “Let’s get to know one another.”
Getting to know one another, it turns out, means having my wrists restrained behind my back and sitting facing outwards, entirely naked, on the lap of a fully clothed Jonah, my legs on either side of his.
His jeans are slightly tugged down because I am impaled on his cock and am not allowed to move while we “get to know one another.” To make matters worse, he has us facing a floor mirror, where I can see the thick root of him spearing into me, pulsing occasionally, glistening with my wet.
Getting to know one another is torture.
After maybe about an hour of cock-warming and “how do you take your coffee?” and “what was your favorite birthday?” and “what’s your most embarrassing childhood memory?
” I’ve soaked Jonah’s jeans all the way through, and I’ve gone nearly blind with need.
My legs are trembling on either side of his, and my core is so tight it’s almost painful.
Any time I tried to direct my magic into my clit or his dick, I’d earn an extra five minutes of “getting to know you.”
But I’m not the only one who’s totally gone. I stare at the mirror, at the way his pupils have dilated, at the bead of sweat that drips down his face, at the angry color of the base of his cock and his balls drawn tight.
Apart from these physical tells, however, you might never know, the way he lazily traces a finger around one breast, watching in the mirror, pulling on my magic through the path it takes.
“And who was your first love?” he asks. A tremor shimmers around the edge of his voice as he uses his other hand to press down on my pelvis, just below my belly button, feeling the outline, the imprint, of where he invades me.
“I’ve never had one,” I grind out.
His hands stop. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think it means?” I snap, at the end of my leash.
Jonah doesn’t care. Instead, I watch as black entirely swallows the blue of his irises, eyes now dark with something predatory.
Staring into the mirror, at the point we’re connected, he slowly lowers his hand and traces my cunt, dragging a finger around the ultra-sensitive flesh stretched around him. Hoarding, possessing, his, his, his.
I come.
I scream and I come with violence, my back bowing and head and body thrashing and writhing over where he spears into me, over the device that’s tortured me for the past hour, energy and magic and light and tears exploding out of me with aggression and rage and relief.
Suddenly, I’m airborne, spun and thrown facedown on the bed, my pussy pulsing around nothing for only half a second before Jonah rams himself in, and out, and in, again and again and again in a primitive rut.
He leans down towards my ear. “I’m keeping you—you know that?” he growls, his new angle grinding into the perfect spot inside me. “This is mine. You belong to me,” His voice has lowered several octaves into something otherworldly and evil, stirring something deep in the core of my magic—
“Yeah—there it is—fuck,” he grits out, as my second orgasm spasms around him.
Tangling his fingers through the hair at the base of my scalp and pressing my face into the mattress, Jonah takes what is his, riding me mercilessly, taking ownership and possession while I cry out and sob with the pleasure of being claimed.
Mine, each thrust says. Mine, mine, mine, until he lets go with a roar that means the same thing.
He tucks me under the duvet like I’m something fragile and precious instead of a violent killer, guiding me onto my side so my back fits perfectly against his front.
The mattress dips as he settles in behind me, one arm sliding under my pillow, the other draping securely over my waist. Strong legs thread through mine, anchoring me there, warm and solid and unmistakably real.
A long, happy hum escapes me. “I feel like one of those things you hoard like a dragon,” I murmur sleepily, pleased.
He presses his mouth to the back of my neck. “Possess,” he corrects softly. “Like a demon.”
My magic, finally quiet after hours of tension and planning and cock-warming, drifts toward him in slow, satisfied waves, like water folding gently against a shoreline. It rests, recognizing something safe and steady and choosing it.
His fingers spread over my stomach, palm warm and protective. He exhales against my hair. “In all seriousness, Mayari,” he whispers, “can I keep you?” The words are half-buried in the dark.
I smile into the pillow, already slipping under. “You’ve been mine since I tried to kill you.”
“Which time?” he asks, and I feel him grinning against my hair.
“The first,” I reply, and then I’m out.