Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
It was just the demon way. And she’d never felt so destructive as she did when she was with Remi.
Maybe he felt the dark need in her thoughts, the way she ached to claw into his flesh, as his self-preservation instincts had him shifting his arm off his face and his eyelids fluttering open. The ice-blue of his eyes pierced through her.
Though, he must have been unaware—hadn’t sensed the way she salivated with the horrible urge to ruin him—since with sleepy eyes, he smiled at her and scooted closer.
He slung an arm around her body and pulled her into his, worming his head onto her pillow.
“Morning,” he said, raspy, even more raspy than usual. He’d worn out his vocal cords with the songs he’d sung while trying to appease the crowd.
“Shhh,” she said, pressing a fingertip to his lips. “Don’t talk. You need to rest your voice.”
He sighed and nipped at her finger before whispering, “Fine.”
His eyes were still closed, and he rested their foreheads together. His fingers skated up and down her naked back, sending tingles through her body. His touch was light, but something about the rhythmic caress was heavy and grounding at the same time.
“Why do you hide your wings?” Remi asked.
“You’re talking,” Skye said admonishingly but with a smile in her voice.
“I’m a rock star. I don’t follow rules,” he whispered, and his thumb brushed over the base of her shoulder blades where her wings would sprout.
“When I’m in Hell, it takes more magic to hide them than to just let them out, but when I’m on Earth, it’s the opposite,” Skye said.
“So the night outside the bar?”
“I used my magic to appear as a full demon. It saves time to show the people I’m trying to make deals with that I’m magical, rather than spending hours convincing them. That’s why I sift people to my bedroom in Hell too.”
Remi wrinkled his nose. “So you take everyone to your bedroom?”
She snorted a laugh. “Sorry. You weren’t special.”
“Damn,” he said, nuzzling his nose against hers. “But your wings come out when I make you come. That makes me special.”
Skye nuzzled back, ignoring the prickles of warning in the back of her head from how much she was enjoying this. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
“You aren’t going to lose your wings now, though, right? Our bargain is okay? Since the whole Metalfest shitshow was Jillian’s fault?”
“Mmm hmm,” Skye mumbled as Remi tangled his fingers into her hair and scratched lightly at her scalp. “Think so. Your soul was still in Hell last time I checked, so the bargain is fine.”
Her body was melting under his touch. She was sinking into a thick, syrupy ease. It coated her destructive tendencies and made her soft. For once she wasn’t worried about being weak in Remi’s presence.
“I…I visited your soul every day,” she said. “It was the weirdest thing because it always seemed so happy to see me.”
She felt Remi’s smile against her shoulder, but something uncertain buzzed in the back of her head.
Did a soul have consciousness? Remi’s shadows certainly seemed like they did, listening to her, wanting to curl around her when she left them out to play.
Maybe after the tour was over, she’d go to Hell to check on his soul again, just to say hello.
“It makes total sense that my soul is as obsessed with you as I am,” Remi said and smoothed his hand down the slope of her back to her ass and squeezed.
“Remi,” she said, leaning over to bite his shoulder.
He squinted open his blue eyes. “What?”
“If you lose your voice and can’t sing, we’re going to be in big fucking trouble,” Skye said.
He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nose. Then he sucked his lips into his mouth and lifted his eyebrows in question.
“Much better,” Skye said and patted his cheek.
He rolled his eyes but smiled. Remi’s fingers traced over her spine and then started drawing on her skin.
“My mom used to do that when I was little,” Skye said. “Draw shapes on my back and then have me guess what she drew.” She barely suppressed a jolt of surprise at the memory, at the easy way it tumbled from her mouth.
Remi didn’t notice her distress. “Mmm,” he hummed, almost happily. He drew a little circle and lifted his hand, waiting.
“Circle,” Skye said, smiling despite the way an uncomfortable emotion filled the back of her throat. Bitter and sharp, she did her best to ignore it by focusing on Remi’s fingers.
Remi kissed her nose as her reward for a correct answer. He flattened his hand and wiped away the image on her back like an eraser.
He drew a square next, and she gave her answer and got her reward.
The next one was more complicated, and it was starting to become difficult to pay attention.
His fingers were gentle and soothing, lulling her into a deep relaxation.
The tingle of anticipation flitted down her body, all the way into the arches of her feet.
She felt a little high under Remi’s attention.
The quiet joy of it seeped into her bones and made each moment that passed seem to expand into infinity.
Remi finished drawing. A square and a triangle and a circle in the middle.
“House?” she murmured.
He flattened his palm to rub up and down her back, erasing the image. “I was trying to draw the cigarette case you had that night in the alley, but a house is pretty close too.”
Skye smiled at the memory. “That was my mom’s.”
“Laurie has one too.”
“Yeah. My mom and his mom were friends before… Well, Laurie’s mom died.”
Remi hummed in contemplation.
“It’s actually not just a cigarette case,” Skye said, a yawn breaking up her sentence.
The quiet luminosity of the moment gave the words she’d usually keep close to her heart a tender place to land.
“It’s a concentrated essence of magic. It can turn into any shape.
Magic can change form, but like energy, it can’t be created or destroyed. ”
Remi was silent for a moment and then whispered, “Your necklace.”
Skye smiled. “Yeah.”