Chapter 25
Dante
SERENITY SLEPT SOUNDLY. I STARED at her slumbering face, my hand still dragging up and down her arm.
I couldn’t seem to stop touching her. My heart and head had been doing a whirlwind of a dance, playing tug-of-war with my emotions.
I searched Serenity’s sleeping face for some answer to the questions now burning me up on the inside. But answers seemed to evade me.
Instead, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of peace and of belonging, two things I’d never felt in my whole goddamn existence.
Her presence, even as she slept, consumed me.
She was beautiful with her lashes closed over pale cheeks, plump lips parted slightly, and silver hair fanned out around her naked shoulders.
Seeing her so vulnerable now made me want to pull her in close to my chest where I could shield her from Bradley, her bullies, and anyone else who’d ever made her feel small.
But what right did I have?
What right did I have to be the night sky she thought I was?
My chest constricted painfully, and sneering at the feeling, I moved closer to tuck her head beneath my bearded chin. She sighed contentedly against my chest and snuggled in closer, and my heart nearly fractured with how much I wanted everything to just disappear.
I wanted my past and the issues that came from it to disappear.
I wanted the line between demons and humans to vanish.
I wanted my lies and the real reason she was in my arms to go away.
Then all that would remain would be the two of us.
The night sky and brightest star.
A distant buzzing sounded from somewhere in my house.
Serenity and I were the only ones here since Drake, the man I’d previously had captive in my basement, had finally been executed by my fellow demons earlier this month.
After a few more seconds of honing in on the sound, I realized it was a phone.
With a wave of my hand, the device causing the sound appeared in my hand.
Though, it wasn’t my phone. I nearly growled when I saw Bradley’s name lighting up Serenity’s screen.
It was past one in the morning, so what could that fucker possibly want from her?
With a glance at her, I swiped to answer the call and put it to my ear, still staring at the top of her head. I didn’t speak. I just listened.
“Serenity? Dollface? Are you there?”
I responded flatly, “She’s unavailable at the moment.”
The bastard on the other end went quiet. When he spoke next, he did so through clenched teeth. “Where is she?”
“Naked against my chest. Can I take a message?”
“You fucking bastard,” Bradley raged on the other end. “You’re a fucking liar.”
“Takes one to know one,” I chuckled darkly. “But for once, I’m not lying.”
The call suddenly ended. I pulled the phone back to grin triumphantly at the screen when a video call came through.
He really wanted to see? I had no issue shoving this in his face, but Serenity was asleep.
I didn’t want this maniacal bastard waking her up.
With a quick thought from me, shadows converged around Serenity’s ears.
The black wisps would be invisible to Bradley’s eyes, and they’d block any sound from reaching the slumbering beauty.
I answered the video call, the screen filling with the image of my bearded chin still resting on top of Serenity’s head while her face pressed into my chest. Her front was covered with the sheet.
I wouldn’t have let him see her exposed like that, even if it was something he’d seen before.
He didn’t deserve that fucking honor. But the sight of her bare shoulders was enough to get the message across.
His pale face fell in shock, and I didn’t bother hiding my smug grin.
“She’s really sleeping with you?”
“Would you like to see my cum still seeping out of her pussy, too?”
Bradley dropped the phone for a second, his angry hisses and curses filling the background. The sound of glass shattering and items being overturned followed. When he came back into view, his face had gone red, and his brow was furrowed so hard that I thought it would get stuck like that.
“She’s not yours,” Bradley fumed.
“Certainly looks that way to me,” I replied. “Give up. She’ll never come back to you. Why would she when she realizes there’s so much more out there than a minute man who doesn’t even know what a clit is, let alone how to pleasure one?”
Bradley’s face went an even deeper shade of red. He leapt to his feet as though doing so would allow him to come through the phone to strangle me. “You want to talk a big game, stupid fucker? Huh? You aren’t shit! You don’t know anything!”
“Say what you want.” I pulled Serenity closer, and she sighed happily against me. A sweet burst of pride shot through me when Bradley’s expression fell at the sound. “But I think her being here with me speaks volumes. It’s over, Bradley. You’ve lost.”
His jaw clenched, and the video became blurry from how hard he shook on the other end. The silence that followed was music to my ears.
“Don’t ever call my girl again,” I hissed before hanging up the phone.
I tossed the device aside and refocused on Serenity in my arms. My blood warmed with the thrill of ending this game I’d set into motion forever ago. But even more than that, I basked in how good it felt to call her that.
My girl.
Because she was.
“ARE YOU HUMMING?”
I looked up at Xander, who watched me with a teasing smirk. He’d cut off the long half of his hair to match the shorter layer on the other side since the last time I’d seen him. Now, the top of his black hair just barely brushed across his forehead as he raised a slender dark brow at me.
Zagan and Perseus studied me with equally knowing grins while Coldin—the only sweet soul in this room right now—stared blankly at the music sheets we were working on.
I’d much rather be in my silk sheets with a certain naked body draped over mine, but Iyla had invited a couple of the girls in the growing friend group to go shopping downtown.
That invite had included Serenity, which had immediately made her brighten.
When I saw how excited she was to be included and invited into this group of supportive people, I couldn’t keep her to myself.
So while she was out with the girls, I tried to focus on my duties here.
It was only after Xander’s teasing question pulled me from my thoughts that I realized I was smiling and, apparently, humming.
Immediately schooling my face, I shrugged and gestured at the sheet music I held. “I was humming the new song, ‘Sparrow.’”
“That’s not how the song sounds at all,” Zagan stated firmly while rubbing at his bottom lip piercings in an effort to hide his growing smile.
“Whatever,” I grumbled, zeroing in my attention on the sheet music Zagan had prepared for each of us.
It had been months since Sinners Do It Better had gone on hiatus, but Zagan had found his footing with writing music again.
He’d prepared a couple of new songs for us, and all five band members sat around the red leather couches in his home recording studio to go over the music and potentially record.
We weren’t ready for a full-blown reemergence in the public yet, but I felt our hiatus coming to an end.
What didn’t seem to be ending were these assholes’ jokes.
“Our boy is smitten,” Xander teased around overly dramatic sniffles of joy.
I bared my teeth at him. Had I been in a better mood with Serenity in my life? Sure. Things were great, and there was a freedom I felt with her, especially now that she knew what I was. It had been a week since she’d found out, and I still couldn’t quite believe that my truth was out in the open.
Mostly.
She knew what I was now, but she still didn’t know me. Her belief that I wasn’t a monster was proof of that. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe there was something good about me, but how could there be anything good inside a spawn of Hell?
I seduced for my own benefit.
I lied to gain satisfaction.
I disregarded humans as worthless playthings.
It was only a matter of time before all of the ugliness that ran in my veins came out for her to see my true colors, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that.
“I knew you couldn’t hate humans forever,” Perseus chuckled, and I nearly cut his stupid golden bun off his head upon hearing it.
He looked a lot healthier now that Harper was doing better.
He was eating again, so the rich color had returned to his skin and the dark circles were gone from beneath his eyes.
“I do hate them,” I argued. “That will never change. They don’t deserve anything more than that.”
My fellow Incubi shouldn’t expect anything more from me.
After all, they’d been there too—prisoners to old bonds and the torture that came from them.
They knew what it was like to be at a human’s mercy, trapped with no way out.
That was part of the reason I never understood how they let themselves get to the point of falling for the women they were with now.
Perseus knew what it meant to be chained inside a tight mountain cave.
Zagan knew the horrors of being buried in a wooden coffin.
I knew the pain of being trapped in a well.
We were free of the places we’d been held before, yet while they had seemed to move on from the painful experience, mine still had a hold of me.
It had been centuries, yet the effects of that nightmare had me feeling like I was still at the bottom of that long drop with only a small opening of light to look up at.
Everytime I let myself remember, I seemed to take dozens of steps backward until I was left with only one thought.
I fucking loathed humans.
Shaking my head, I tossed the sheet music onto the table and stood. “I need a drink.”
“Water is in the mini fridge,” Zagan said with a point at the corner of the room.
I glared at my fellow demons disguised as humans and hissed, “A real one.”