Chapter 5 #2
He made a sound in his throat, almost a purr. “I can do better than decent. Just…” He hesitated, and his hand came up to cup the back of my skull, careful as if I were truly breakable. “There are some things I’m supposed to do. Some… tests. But I want to wait. Surprise you. If that’s okay.”
I tilted up, squinting at him through the steam. “Tests? Like compatibility challenges, or are you going to try to drown me and see if I float?”
It was a joke, but Samiel’s hesitation was real. “A little bit of both, maybe.” He ran his thumb along the edge of my ear, a rhythm meant to soothe, but his eyes stayed locked on the horizon.
I wasn’t sure why, but I liked that he didn’t want to give it all away at once.
There was something weirdly respectful about it.
He didn’t want to scare me off, or maybe he didn’t want to scare himself, but either way, he wanted to do it right.
It made my insides do that little flip they only ever did after the credits rolled on a good horror movie, the kind where you got exactly what you came for but still weren’t sure if you’d sleep tonight.
“Okay,” I said, after a while. “Surprise me, then. But if it’s a trust fall over the lake, I’m pushing you in first.”
He chuckled, and the sound was so human, it almost startled me. “Deal. But you should know, I can’t drown. Not even if you held my head under.”
I snorted. “Now I have to try, just to see the science.”
The temperature fell off a cliff after sunset, desert warmth bleeding into a blue-black cold that sank through the deck and bit every patch of exposed skin.
I shivered, and Samiel, without a word, shifted his wings to create a windbreak, then pulled me almost all the way onto his lap.
The way his body radiated heat made it feel like he’d absorbed the sun and was now parceling it out, molecule by molecule, for my benefit alone.
There was a weird comfort in the way he held me, not possessive but present, like I was an answer to a question he’d spent years trying not to ask.
We stayed like that until the jets cycled off and the hush of the valley swept back in.
Eventually, the chill crept back into my bones, the desert night reasserting itself.
I shivered, and Samiel immediately lifted me out of the tub, wrapping me in a towel so oversized, it may have doubled as a tent.
He carried me back inside without a word.
The glass doors whooshed shut behind us and for a second, I thought I heard the echo of my own scream ricochet off the lake.
There was a moment of vertigo as Samiel held me suspended above the carpet, wings braced for balance, his eyes black with want—and then the towel slipped, baring me again, and he tucked it around me like a secret.
My stomach, always the loyal saboteur, seized the moment to make its needs violently known.
It let out a noise so outrageous and prolonged it sounded like into a new species of lesser demon.
The sound vibrated between us, echoing off the glass and the concrete, and I felt my cheeks heat up in the way only hunger and the total dissolution of dignity could produce.
Samiel arched a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching. “That,” he said, “sounds like a threat.”
I peeled the towel up higher on my chest, pretending it was armor. “You’d better feed me before I eat you. And not in the fun way.”
He set me down gently, feet barely touching the shag rug, and then let his hands linger at my waist for a beat too long. “What do you want? I stocked for every contingency.”
I considered. “Surprise me. But nothing processed. I want real food. I want, like, dinner.” The admission sounded juvenile, but Samiel’s face broke into a lopsided grin like I’d just passed a test he wasn’t sure I’d studied for.
He stalked into the kitchen, flicking on the lights with his tail.
He rummaged in the fridge, and I watched the play of muscle at his back, the way his wings tucked in but quivered at the tips every time I shifted the towel and exposed a patch of thigh.
Maybe he noticed; maybe he just liked the idea of me watching.
Either way, he moved like a man who wanted to be caught.
He lined up ingredients on the butcher block: eggs, a block of cheese, a small pile of green onions, a suspiciously perfect tomato, sourdough bread. He looked at me over his shoulder and said, “Do you like breakfast for dinner, or is that too on the nose?”
“Breakfast is my favorite dinner,” I said, still swaddled in towel, perched on the nearest barstool. “If you can make a decent omelet, you can have my soul. For three days, anyway.”
He cracked eggs with a single-handed flourish, no shell shards anywhere, and started whisking them with a ferocity that nearly matched the way he’d fucked me.
The skillet heated, the cheese grated itself beneath his claws, and in less than five minutes he had a perfect, golden curd folding over itself on the plate.
He layered in tomato and chive, then slid the whole thing to me with a proud, almost bashful smile.
I took a bite. It was flawless, creamy, the cheese barely melted inside so it oozed with every forkful. “Oh my god,” I moaned, louder than necessary. “You’re wasted on the bachelor circuit. You could run a restaurant with food like this. Five stars, would bang again.”
Samiel grinned, a slow, prideful curl of his mouth. “Give me another night. I’ll show you what I can really do.” The words came out dark and deliberate, like a promise—though I couldn’t be sure if he meant the food, the fucking, or both.
I dared him with a look, then devoured the rest of the omelet in greedy, undignified bites.
By the time I finished, the towel was slipping dangerously low, and my skin had developed that prickly, post-hot-tub hypersensitivity that made everything feel faintly electric.
I shimmied off the stool and let the towel drop to the floor, just to see if Samiel would react.
He did. His eyes flickered over my body in a way that was both clinical and avaricious, as if he wanted to log every contour for a report later. He wiped his hands on a towel, then stalked toward me with a predatory patience I was already learning to recognize as his baseline.
“You waited too long to eat,” he said, voice low but edged with something like scold. “You always do that?”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t hide the flush. “I forget sometimes. Deadlines, distractions, existential dread. I’ll eat when I’m hungry, or when it’s in front of me.” I shrugged like it was nothing, but he didn’t let it slide.
He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger, not hard, just commanding.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, and the heat in his words made my knees want to buckle.
“You’re not allowed to starve yourself around me.
If you go more than six hours, I’ll hunt you down and make you eat whether you want to or not.
” The promise was dark and unyielding, and for a second I wondered if this was what it felt like to be cared for, or possessed, or both. The scary part was—I didn’t hate it.
He watched my face for signs of resistance, and when he saw none, he released my chin and bent to pick up the towel. He draped it over my shoulders, infuriatingly gentle after all the predatory heat of his stare. “You’re going to need your strength for tomorrow, Annie. I have plans.”
I snorted, trying to play it off. “You’re giving me the full demon experience, aren’t you? Next you’ll be planning out my macros and hiding protein powder in my drinks.”
He flicked an eyebrow. “I could. Do you want a smoothie?” He said it with such serious intent that I laughed, a real, honest sound that bounced off the concrete and glass of the kitchen.
“I’m a nutritionist,” I reminded him, “and the only time I ever eat like a nutritionist is when I’m too tired to make food, or too stubborn to admit I need it. So yeah, breakfast for dinner is basically my superfood.”
Samiel’s brow creased, then smoothed. “You are a nutritionist,” he said, my statement jogging his memory.
I nodded, licking the last bit of cheese from my fingers.
"I do remote consults for a lot of tech people—paranoid types, mostly, who want cheat codes for not dying young.
Half my job is explaining to grown adults that coffee doesn't count as breakfast, and the other half is convincing them that the human body is not a blender you can run on Red Bull and existential dread alone. "
He watched me push the empty plate away, his eyes tracking the movement. "So your whole job is telling people how not to kill themselves with their own appetites?" His claws tapped the counter, a touch so careful it made my heart spasm.
"That, and making them feel okay about having one in the first place.
" I dabbed at the corner of my mouth with my finger, catching the last bit of egg.
"I mostly see clients by Zoom. It's all spreadsheets and shame spirals.
" I paused, realizing I'd just demolished his perfect omelet without coming up for air.
"It's weirdly intimate, telling people how to eat.
You get to see all their secrets, you know?
I watch them hoard their granola bars and guilt like it's currency.
That's the fun of it—getting to see how people really live, not how they want you to think they do.
" I ran my finger along the empty plate, collecting the last traces of melted cheese, and considered the demon in front of me, who was already eyeing the fridge like he was planning his next culinary seduction.
"Honestly, you're the first person who's ever made me eat after sex. Usually it's the reverse."
After a while, the edge came off. I slumped over the counter, resting my forehead on the cold marble. “I’ll have to get my license transferred if this thing sticks,” I said, a lazy mumble.