Chapter 22
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Samiel
Icollapsed on my back, pulse hammering in my skull, and stared up at the ceiling while Annie melted across the sheets.
I couldn't remember a time when my body had felt so empty and so full at the same time, every nerve fried to glass, every bone melting under her weight.
For a long stretch of minutes, neither of us spoke.
The only sounds were her breath, the gentle snort of the cat nestling onto the pillow by my feet, and the blood still roaring in my ears.
Annie rolled onto me, a slick, beautiful mess, and flopped her face into my chest. “If anyone else can make me black out from sex, I don’t wanna meet them,” she mumbled, voice muffled in my skin. “I’ll die happy never knowing.”
“Good,” I said, still panting, “because you’re not allowed to meet anyone else. Ever again.”
She snorted, which vibrated across my ribcage like a threat.
“Possessive much?”
“Only always,” I said, and I meant it with every ruined, grateful cell in my body.
She raked her fingers through my hair, tugging at the roots, and let them drift down to my chest, where her nails traced the upraised marks from the last few hours.
“You know,” she said, “when I left, I half-thought you’d turn into a werewolf and come after me. Or eat the cat and leave her paw on my pillow as some sort of fucked-up apology.”
“I missed you more than I missed air,” I confessed, before I could think of something clever. “It was Hell on earth.”
She made a noise, half a purr, and curled up tighter. “Guess you’re stuck with me then.”
“Would you trust me enough to say I will be right back?” I asked, expecting her to laugh or call me a cocky bastard. Instead, she released me, and I sauntered casually out of the room, still completely naked.
The return to the bedroom was almost ceremonial: ice cream, crackers, two spoons, and maybe two ounces of pride left.
Annie sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, one hand pressing a towel to her inner thigh where I’d left an impression that looked like a bite mark and a meteor strike at the same time.
I crawled on the mattress and dumped the food between us.
“Your electrolyte solution, madam.” I popped the lid off her ice cream and jammed the spoon into the carton at an obscene angle.
She grinned, digging in, still flushed from sweat and laughter.
The first bite made her eyes flip up, and she made a sound so pornographic I nearly pounced on her again on the spot.
“I can’t believe you,” she said, around a mouthful of melting ice cream. “You’re a monster.”
“That has literally never been in dispute,” I replied, and tore open the Cheez-Its. I shoved a handful in my mouth, crumbs dusting my chest, and watched her eat.
It was impossible not to think about how she’d looked twenty minutes ago, body pinned and trembling, then about how it’d felt to nearly lose her.
I was desperate, not just for her body, but for every weird piece of her—every compulsion, every sharp angle, even the human drama she’d dragged in with her.
Annie
Samiel knew exactly how I craved junk food after sex. Showing up like some demonic Adonis with ice cream and Cheez-Its was practically foreplay for another round. I shoveled chocolate fudge brownie into my mouth like I was being timed, letting it drip shamelessly down my thighs.
"Mind-blowing orgasms followed by processed cheese products?" I said, licking my spoon clean with religious devotion. "This is how cults get started. If you proposed right now, I'd not only say yes—I'd let you pick the wedding colors."
He put the ice cream down, and for a second it looked like was going to say something. Then he reached over to the nightstand, rummaged with those ridiculous hands, and pulled out a box so tiny that I didn’t even clock what it was until he held it, black velvet and trembling, between us.
My mouth froze open around the spoon. “No,” I wheezed, a sudden, real panic blooming in my chest.
He grinned, almost apologetic. “I told myself I wouldn’t do this like a cliché,” he said, popping the lid.
Inside, crimson silk cradled a ring like nothing I’d ever seen: a blood-red ruby, roughly the size of my thumbnail, caged in wrought gold and flanked on either side by three tiny black diamonds.
The kind of ring that said “I want to own you, but only if you eat me alive first.”
He looked at me, then at the ring, then back to me.
“I never wanted to do the thing people do. The wedding, the contract, the forever promise.” He exhaled, the sound almost a laugh, but not.
“But then I met you, and I realized I was already ruined for anything else. I don’t know how to be good, Annie.
I don’t know how to be normal. But I know I want you, and I know I want to keep you, and—” He looked away, down at his hands.
“If you want it, I want forever. With you. And the cat, and the stupid car, and all the junk food we can eat before we both die of cholesterol poisoning.”
I stared at it. Then at him. Then back at it, because the alternative was looking him in the eye and having my brain splinter.
Then I lunged, nearly toppling the entire bed, and slammed into him, bare thighs straddling his hips. I buried my face in his neck, soaked through with all the things I could never say. I must have made some kind of strangled seal-bark of a noise, because Samiel started to panic.
“You don’t have to—if you’re not sure, or if this is too much, just—”
“Shut up,” I said, tears streaking down my cheeks, “and give me the goddamn ring.”
He laughed and jammed it on my finger. It was cold, then molten, then part of my entire hand—giant, ostentatious, dramatic. Absolutely perfect.
“You know,” I said, blinking at it, “most guys would hide this thing in a donut or something. Not just, like, haul it out after a marathon hatefuck with Cheez-Its.”
He grinned. “I don’t own a donut big enough for you. Or a box.” Then he watched my face—waiting, with a terror that made him so much less monster and so much more boy.
“Yes,” I said, and the word ricocheted around the room, louder than my own orgasm before. “Yes, you idiot. Yes, yes, yes.” I couldn’t stop repeating it. I didn’t want to.
He let me tackle him. He tucked me under his chin, arm heavy and possessive across my waist, and for a long time neither of us said a thing.
When I finally caught my breath, I twisted the ring so it caught the light. “We’re really doing this,” I said. “I’m going to have to introduce you to my parents, aren’t I?” The thought was so outrageous, I started laughing again.
He did not laugh. “I’ll meet them. Whenever you want.” Then, softer, “Who do you want to tell first?”
I thought about it. My mom was the obvious answer, but weirdly I also wanted to show Mayor Vepar, to include the cat somehow, to maybe send a mass email to every ex I’d ever had, subject line: SORRY, YOU LOSE.
But mostly I wanted to stay there, in that room, with the man who brought me ice cream and ruined my body and put an actual demon’s engagement ring on my finger, and never, ever leave.
“I don’t care who knows,” I said, stroking his cheek. “It’s my favorite secret. Let’s keep it for just a little while.”
He nodded. “Our secret,” he said, and I realized it was the first time he’d ever said ours without sounding like he meant mine alone.
We lay there in silence, sticky and exhausted, and I thought, This is what it means to be claimed, not caged. I’d found the line. And I’d decided, for once in my life, to stay.
The cat, sensing the shift in power, jumped up on the bed and immediately began licking the ice cream off my leg. I let her. I let the world be as strange and perfect as it wanted.
And for the first time in forever, I felt safe enough to want more.