Chapter 5
This motherfucker cannot be serious. I make one little snarky comment and he puts me in a cage? I swear to god, the second he lets me out, I’m stabbing him again.
“Very funny,” I grumble, ignoring the smug look on his face as I test my newest prison.
It’s solid iron, tall enough for me to stand but not to walk around, and barely wide enough for me to sit down and stretch my legs.
I won’t be able to lay down at all. “And what exactly are we hoping to accomplish here?”
“It’s accomplishing a smile on my face. I think that makes it worth it, cum back.”
Clearly, I didn’t kill him hard enough.
“Did you just use ‘cum back’ as a comeback?”
“Clever, huh? Took me about five seconds to come up with it, and I’ve told you so many times, don’t explain my jokes. It ruins them.”
“Then maybe you should work on them actually being funny.”
“I laughed,” he retorts, pulling on some boxers before he pours another drink, and I swear he looks clean already. Stupid magic. “It’s not my fault you have the sense of humor of a cadaver.”
“At least I don’t look like one,” I remind him, pointing to the jagged scar across his neck. “I may be covered in jizz but I look more alive than you do.”
That gets him to shut up, but the deadpan stare he gives me has me worried for what’s to come. “I don’t really remember what I looked like that day. Want a refresher?”
“No, I remember perfectly fine. Despite what you think, it was the worst day of my life too. It just wasn’t my last.”
He looks me up and down like he’s trying to decide his next move, but my words have him hesitating. “Did you ever wish it was? Did you ever consider... joining me?”
“No, I didn’t,” I say honestly. It’s more complicated than that, so I do my best to explain. “Maybe a few passing thoughts, but I never believed in the afterlife, and I damn sure didn’t think we’d end up in the same place if it were real. You were a good man, Adrian. I was never a good woman.”
I watch his chest rise and fall with a deep breath. “And yet here I am.” He shakes his head like he’s shoving those thoughts aside, then plasters on a fake smile. “You’d be a hot demon, by the way. The deals you could broker with those hips.”
“So is that your plan? Torture me until I’m a demon just like you?” The thought terrifies me, but I try not to let it show. ”We may be here awhile.”
“You made it sound like I was living a dream come true here.” He sniffs the air. “So why do I smell your fear?”
I don’t miss the way he reaches down to adjust himself like he enjoys it, but it doesn’t make it any better for me.
“Because the person who did this to you didn’t have the face of someone you once loved.”
“And how would you know that, Lysandra? Would you like to see?”
My hackles rise. Logic tells me he’s lying — he told me himself that once they’re in Hell, their only choices are their human bodies or their demon forms — but my instincts say otherwise. He just told me that. Why lie now? “Sure. Show me then, because I don’t believe you.”
Adrian closes the distance between us, one hand gripping the bar while the other beckons me forward.
Like I have anywhere to go.
I take the half-step forward that brings me to him, flinching when his fist tangles tightly in my hair and he pins me there. “As you wish.”
The world around us fades, and suddenly we’re in a different Hell altogether. It’s some sort of bare, beach house with the words “all your fault” covering every wall. I can smell the sea salt, hear the waves, but although that familiarity should be comforting, it’s the exact opposite.
There’s nothing peaceful about this place, and based on the gorgeous redhead, I’m guessing this is her Hell. And she’s the demon that answered his call.
She’s staring down at me — or who I assume is Adrian — and grinning. “When will you stop moaning her name?” She teases, slicing a knife down my chest, and I’m shocked when I actually feel the bite of it. “If you want to see her so badly, so be it.”
She looks across from Adrian/me to where my visage is standing, and there’s a deranged smile on fake-me’s face as I slowly take the knife from her. “Hello, Ade. You look so hot covered in blood. Can I play too?”
I lift the blade above my head and stab down, a gasp leaving me as I return to the cage in Adrian’s Hell and he releases me entirely.
“Believe me now?”
My heart is beating so hard it’s making me lightheaded. She didn’t need to have my face, she conjured my whole fucking body — piercings, hair dye, birth mark and all. “No wonder you hate me.”
“I knew it wasn’t you, but it was a long two years.”
He turns away from me and begins to walk away, giving me an opportunity to stare at his back.
It makes me think of all the times I would admire it as he slept on his stomach with arms raised under his pillow, giving me a sense of longing I cannot feel.
This isn’t that same man, yet he smells the same, walks the same, has that adorable mole at the base of his spine.
My Adrian may be in there somewhere, but I doubt I’ll ever get him back. “So you knew it wasn’t really me, and I’ll know it really is you. Seems fair.”
“Fair? You want to talk about fair in Hell?” He chuckles, plopping down on a recliner that’s facing me. “You know what I want to talk about? Those other dudes you fucked. What are their names?”
“I’m not sure how that’s any of your business,” I mumble, desperately hoping he’ll drop this before I have to tell him the truth. “You said you can’t go topside without being summoned anyway, so what does it matter?”
“Believe it or not, I have friends in low places.” He summons his bottle of alcohol and starts singing Garth Brooks with a terrible southern accent, and I can’t help but stare. He hates country music.
The combination with that fucking song blaring in the background is enough to make me wish I could die down here and stay dead. “Don’t quit your day job.”
He flashes me a grin that shows off his sharp teeth. “You used to love my bad singing.”
“That was before you had a tail.”
“Fine. You sing for me then.” He meets my gaze. “Now.”
I feel the power behind the command, and as much as I try to fight it, the song comes out anyway. I can feel my cheeks heating up from embarrassment as he takes it up a notch, forcing me to grip one of the bars of my cage like a stripper pole and dance.
“Good girl. Look at you,” he praises, rising to his feet to come closer again. “Let me see that ass.”
My body violently jerks as I turn around, and he bends me over so fast my head slams off the other side of the cage. I’d cuss him out if he didn’t have me midway through the second verse.
His sinful hands slide along my skin, arousal warring with the degradation I feel when two fingers slide up my cunt. “What were their names?” he growls, pushing those digits inside of me. “Say it.”
Again, the command isn’t something I can fight.
The problem is... I don’t know.
“I never knew their names,” I word-vomit. “I didn’t want love or companionship or any of that bullshit. I just wanted to feel something.”
“And what did you feel?”
I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I have no choice. “Hollow fucking orgasms.”
He steps away from me and releases his hold on my will, probably pissed off that I lied to him earlier. That’s fine with me.
Turning away from him, I give myself one moment to internally freak the fuck out. This is real, I know it is, and I’m in big fucking trouble.
“Orgasms?” he repeats darkly, the simmering rage evident in how he drags out the word. “So they did make you come.”
Suddenly, a shirt that reaches my knees is covering my naked body, and Adrian is strolling toward the door fully dressed.
“Men are fucking ridiculous,” I mutter. “You think just because a woman’s cunt spasms a couple of times that it means something.”
“If it meant nothing, why did you lie?”
The power in his voice echoes around me, but I won’t cower. Not today.
“Because I don’t expect you to understand. Our bodies respond to all sorts of things, but it’s different when you have our minds, too.”
His jaw ticks. “I don’t blame you for wanting to get off, Lysandra,” he growls. “I blame them for touching you. There’s a difference. I... just want to talk to them.”
Mmhm. I’m sure. “Well, I already told you I don’t know their names. I did some drugs, went to a bar, and picked whoever I could find.”
“Were you hoping to hit it off the same way we did or what?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Hold that thought.”
He disappears out the front door, giving me about two minutes to breathe and try to find a door to my cage before he’s waltzing back in.
But now, he isn’t alone.
There’s another demon with him, slightly taller with messy, dark brown hair, and a Y-shaped scar on his chest that looks deeper than Adrian’s. He walks straight toward my cage with a smirk on his face that makes me want to hit him.
Demons shouldn’t be this hot.
“Nice shirt,” he chuckles. “You smell like cum, though.”
Irritation boils just under the surface as I flip him off. “So do you. Bottoming for Satan again?”
His black eyes seem to get a little darker. “Christmas, control your girl.”
“If I could do that, she wouldn’t be in a cage, would she?” Adrian grumbles. “She’s very hard-headed. Speaking of which, I need you to get inside that hard head and pick out the dudes she fucked while I was dead. She doesn’t know their names, but I know their faces are in there.”
“Why?”
He narrows his eyes at the amusement on the other demon’s face. “Because I want to sing them a fucking Christmas carol, Kael.”
Backing up, I press myself against the back wall of the cage as Kael turns toward me again. “Oh, this will be fun,” he purrs. “Open wide, baby girl.”
I flinch, expecting him to grab me, but I don’t feel anything — not physically, anyway.
The intrusion I feel is all mental. Suddenly, I’m sifting through every memory of the last ten years at rapid speed. They’re flying past so quickly I barely recognize most, and then the face of the first man I fucked after Adrian stops dead.
Then the next, then the last.
Kael helps himself to every moment until the present then finally lets me go.
“Her taste is questionable at best. One of them had a mustache.”
“Well, they can’t all be winners like me. Give me them.” I’m not privy to whatever the fuck they do to pass that information, but I see it clearly when Adrian sees the men for himself. “Please tell me you didn’t kiss that one.”
I’m prepared to lie yet again just to hurt his feelings when Kael ruins it.
“She didn’t. She hasn’t been kissed since she murdered you.”
How much Adrian softens would be annoying, but I’m too busy being annoyed at his stupid demon friend. “Really? That’s all it takes to make you forget they touched your girl?”
Adrian growls. “I’ll forget it after their song. That’s all I needed, let me know the cost later on.”
The fucker eyes me like he’s considering me as his price, but seems to think better of it. “Yeah, will do. Good luck.”
He vanishes into thin air, and Adrian closes the distance between us to grip the bars. “You smell angry.”
“Angry?” I repeat, getting madder by the second now that the immediate danger is gone.
“Why would I be angry that some fucking weirdo with autopsy scars just made me relive the worst moments of my life? Why would I be angry that you put me in a fuck ass cage? Why would I be angry that I really did kill the man I loved, because the one in front of me is a heartless, vindictive dick? Couldn’t tell you, I’m happier than a fucking clam. ”
“Mmhm.” He stares at me for so long I imagine poking him in his stupid black eyes. “So where do we go from here, Hellcat?”
“I guess you make me like you and I’ll kill you again, just better this time.”
Immediately, I regret it, but I don’t take it back. He will not break me.
The smile he gives me is as fake as it is wicked. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”
Huffing, I clench my jaw until the urge to cry recedes and lean back against my cage. “Then get on with it.”