Chapter 1
“I don’t fucking know Latin,” I mumble to myself, squinting down at the barely-legible instructions. “What if I pronounce something wrong?”
The pages, unhelpfully, don’t answer me.
I’m standing in the middle of the blood-red demonic sigil I painted directly on my hardwood floors, surrounded by candles that are rapidly burning down, and I’m still no closer to summoning this fucking demon.
It’s rude of him, really. Surely something I did made his ears burn or his nose itch or whatever the hell people say happens when someone is talking about them.
He could make this easier on both of us and just skip the theatrics.
... She?
Again, I don’t fucking know Latin. I could be summoning a goat for all I know, or maybe a sentient lamp.
Wouldn’t that just be my luck? I spend four years in federal prison for accidentally manslaughtering the love of my life, get my shit together just to end up working for a gross, rapey bastard, get shunned by the police because apparently convicts are incapable of ever telling the truth, and then when I go to get my grand revenge, I summon a talking light fixture instead of a demon.
I’d read the instructions a little closer, but I’m bored.
“Daemon potentiae et ultionis, veni et ostende te ipsum... what the fuck does that even mean?”
Groaning, I sit down in the middle of the sigil and stare into the burning trash can in front of me.
This isn’t fair. I wanted what every girl wants — love, safety, and security.
Instead, I found none. I made the biggest mistake of my life eight years ago today, and nothing in my world has been right since.
This is the answer, I know it is. I can reset the scales, start over, move on.
But Peter Rusnak will not get away with what he did to me.
I’ll suffer for the rest of my life for what I did to Adrian. It’s only fair Peter suffers too.
I can do this.
Exhaling hard, I grab the book and go back to the beginning. I read each step a little closer, use my phone to check pronunciation, and let my chest fill up with desire and the openness to receive the incoming energy. This has to work. It has to.
Please.
Suddenly, all the candles go out. The trash can fills with smoke instead of flame, choking me, and the room is cast into darkness.
“Hello?” I whisper. “Show yourself!”
“You pull me from Hell only to boss me around?” a deep voice growls from the shadows, but no matter how hard I squint, I can’t see anything at all. “Tell me what you want and I’ll consider it.”
He sounds closer now, but as I reach in the direction I feel his presence, my hand finds nothing but air.
Holy shit.
I did it.
I summoned a fucking demon.
Glee, disbelief and fear all war for my attention as I clear my throat. “I want you to rape a rapist.” My eyes are so wide they’re stinging, but I still can’t see anything as his energy seems to shift around me. I spin to keep up. “I want him to know how it feels.”
I feel his laugh as much as I hear it. “Maybe it’s you who should be the demon here.”
Suddenly, he’s standing before me, candles lit once again, and I gasp when I see him. “Ardis?” I knew the lead singer of my favorite band was a badass, but I didn’t think the devil part of Darling Devil was literal. “When the hell did you become a demon?”
“I always was.” He must have ditched the British accent somewhere along the way, because it’s nowhere to be heard right now. “And Ardis isn’t my real name. It’s Azazel.”
Huh?
Raising an eyebrow, I ask, “Like the weirdo from Supernatural? Why aren’t your eyes yellow?”
“Would that make you feel more comfortable?” He flashes them yellow for me and then crosses his arms. “So tell me why this rapist is worth the cost.”
He?s not worth anything, but how high can the price be?
It?s not like souls are real, and I?m already a killer.
It wouldn?t be that hard to do it again if the price is dirty work.
“He assaulted me, and if he did it to me, he?s doing it to others. He thinks he can get away with it because he?s rich and owns a business and he only hires women who don?t make very good witnesses. I just want him to know he?s not untouchable.”
Azazel hums. “I like the way you think, Lysandra Sallow.”
I didn’t tell him my name, but I’m not surprised I didn’t have to. I’d almost be disappointed if I did.
“So there. You’ve got a demon cock, right? It has to be big. Rip his ass in half. Literally.”
The demon grins. “How big do you want it to be?”
Is that really something I can choose?
Before I can voice my question, his unbelievably warm hand is grabbing my own and pressing it against his crotch, his cock swelling as he watches my reaction.
It was big to begin with, but now... no human could take it and live to tell the tale.
It’s kinda hot.
“Alright, big boy. That’ll do.”
His pitch black eyes scan my face, amusement shining through as he leans in closer. “And how do we seal this deal, Lysie? What did they do in your little television show?”
“They kiss,” I say with a lump in my throat. Yes, this will be the only chance I ever get in my entire life to kiss Ardis Darling, but this isn’t Ardis Darling. This is a demon. An actual fucking demon. “But I’m sure we could just shake hands. I’d offer to shake cocks, but I don’t have one.”
“Do you want one?”
I feel something tingle where my clit is, and for a brief moment, I panic — but instead he just steps away with a laugh.
“We can shake hands. But first...” He twists his wrist around and suddenly there’s a stack of papers in his hand that he’s holding out to me, like I can focus on anything but the fact that I almost just grew a demon dick.
“We’re not just breezing past that,” I argue.
”If you give me one, can you take it away again?
I’d love to do a little helicoptering, maybe fuck my friend so she can finally have an orgasm she doesn’t have to give herself, dip it in chocolate just to see how it feels, stack a few donuts on it, pee standing up.
.. but I don’t want to keep it. Can I like.
.. donate it afterward to someone who actually wants to keep it?
There are plenty of people out there who just can’t afford the surgery they need to feel at home in their bodies. Why aren’t you giving them dicks?”
Tilting his head, he steps in closer to shove the papers into my hands. “I don’t do charity. I can make some tweaks to our contract if you’d like to have some fun with me, but I will not give you a cock to fuck someone else with. I don’t see how that benefits me.”
So he’s either selfish or jealous, which are both interesting. I didn’t consider that demons had feelings at all. “Fine,” I concede, taking the contract and looking around my barely-lit room for a pen. “I don’t have to sign in blood or something stupid, do I?”
“Your fingerprint will do.”
In a flash, his sharp canine is sinking into my thumb so deeply, blood begins to pool and drip down the palm of my hand.
The way he licks the taste off his lips makes me shiver more than the strange, radiating pain, but it also.
.. never mind. Not even I’m that fucking weird.
“Oh. So yes, I do have to sign in blood.” Grumbling, I push the bleeding pad of my thumb on the signature line and hand the papers back. “Why are there so many?”
“You should have read them if you wanted to know.” He tosses them up into the air and they immediately disappear, then brushes off his hands as he walks toward the door. “See you soon, Lysie. You might want to clean this mess up and close the gate you opened.”
He winks at me and vanishes, his chuckle echoing behind him as I cuss myself out loudly for not realizing I could summon more than one thing.
I got the one I need, so now I just have to go back to the stupid book and figure out how to end it.
Good enough.