Chapter Eighteen
DEVLIN
The shower in Violet’s apartment has become my very own personal torture chamber.
Every time I step inside and catch the faintest whiff of her homemade shampoo, I’m instantly hard for her.
Rock fucking hard.
And that’s the problem. Because on the rarest of occasions, sex can lead to attachment. Even for me. And my situation with the tea witch is much too untenable to risk any sort of attachment—especially the emotional sort.
Fuck.
Where in the bleeding fiery lakes is this even coming from? I can’t recall the last time a woman stirred anything in me beyond lust and annoyance. And in recent years, even the lust part has waned, every interaction feeling exactly the same as the last, a countdown to some final end that never, ever arrives.
Yet here comes this witch, stirring.
This may be shocking to hear—it’s shocking to admit, even to myself—but I’ve not had so much as a single wank since Violet and I crossed paths. Oh, I’ve thought about it, for sure. Came pretty damn close on more than one or two (hundred) occasions.
But something always holds me back.
Because for as many mistakes as I’ve made—and trust me, listing them would fill an entire library—I do know this:
As long as Violet is on my mind, any form of sex—even sex of the lone-wolf nature—is too dangerous. Comes too damn close to triggering those pesky attachment issues, and then where the fuck will I be? Fast-forward a month. Violet, tea shop bustling, heart’s desire unlocked, everything set to rights. Me, alone in my study, hiding out from our party guests, longing for things that were never mine to want in the first place.
Or worse. Me, cursed to a mortal life because I couldn’t meet my father’s demands. Cursed to die, like everyone else, with nothing but a cracked heart stuffed full of anger. Full of regret.
So. Celibate I’ve remained. Self-control I’ve mastered.
But fucking Hell. Tonight, after what I just witnessed in her bedroom?
Call me weak, call me a fool. But I can’t hold back another moment.
The poor, sweet little witch. Mortified doesn’t even begin to describe it. The crimson color of her cheeks set off her bright blue eyes in a way that will haunt me for eternity—a moment frozen in time to revisit again and again, long after I return to Los Angeles. To Hell, if I ever make it back there.
By sheer force of will and all the Hell magic I could muster, I kept from ravaging her tonight. But there’s no way I can sleep like this. Fuck, I can barely remember my own name.
Everything in me aches as I wish her goodnight and close her bedroom door behind me, my cock pressing so urgently against my silk pajamas I’m certain they’ll tear. It’s a wonder I can even make it to the bath, but somehow I do. Lock the fucking door and turn on the water, full steam ahead.
Stripping bare and stepping in behind the glass door, I get that first heady whiff of the shampoo, like lemons and coconuts and sunshine, deadly fucking combo, and my fist is already wrapped tight around my stone-hard cock, imagining her on her knees for me, the feel of her soft mouth taking me in, my fingers tightening in those wild curls as she licks and teases and sucks…
Mmm… it’s almost too much to imagine. Too fucking indulgent, but I’m in too deep to turn back now.
Catching her like that tonight… knowing she was just behind the door pleasuring herself… wondering above all else if she was thinking of me the same way I’ve been thinking of her…
It’s enough to drive me to the brink of madness.
I tighten my grip and stroke, one hand braced against the tile, eyes squeezed shut as I picture those soft pink lips, her innocent blue eyes gazing up at me as she loses herself in her own secret fantasies, the good witch who longs to be bad, just for one night…
Fuck, yes…
One more stroke, another, faster, harder, and… fuuuck… I hold my breath and come with a shudder that leaves me trembling and spent and slumping against the tiles, waiting for my heart to return to my body.
Despite the solo act, it’s still the best bloody orgasm I’ve had in years, my muscles relaxed, everything inside me warm and content.
But not, I realize, wholly sated.
Bloody Hell, she’s still with me, and this shower-time dalliance has brought me no closer to getting her out of my mind than I was the first time I gathered her into my arms and drew her close, inhaling the scent of her lemon-coconut hair and burned-sugar magic.
Fuck. Me.
I turn the water as cold as it will go, pruning my skin and shriveling my balls, damn near turning myself blue, and still, the woman won’t leave me.
It’s not just her intoxicating scent or the damned romance novel scenes we’re narrating nightly, either. It’s not even catching her unawares tonight during her most private moments—an event so thoroughly burned into my memories, I’m declaring this day a national holiday.
No. Something else about this witch is chipping away at me. Several somethings. Her bright eyes and the awkward laugh that always tells me my joke hit the mark. The quiet concentration written all over her face as she selects the ingredients for her next brew. The warmth in her eyes when a customer compliments her. And the shirts! Don’t even get me started. Gnomes and fairies and animals sipping tea, and the original mushrooms too, all of them conspiring to kill me with an overdose of adorableness that should make me want to strangle someone but instead only drives me wild with need.
I’m in dangerous territory here, and I’ve no bloody idea what to do about it. Because every day that passes, our arrangement feels less like a magical obligation and more like something I look forward to—something I want to keep looking forward to.
Spending time with her… It’s almost enough to make me want to remove the mask for good. To stop fucking pretending for once in my literal God-forsaken life and just… just be.
Right. Talk about an impossible fantasy.
The ugly truth of it is… For all the outrageous favors I grant, for all the favors I’m owed, there’s one thing the Devil can never have for himself.
Love.
So instead, I turn off the water, grab a towel, and do what I do best.
Take all of it—the fantasy, the desire, the inconvenient feelings—and shove them down in that rusty locked box inside me, right next to the abandonment issues and addictions and all the scars that can’t be seen, and instead I don the mask, plaster on a nothing-can-touch-me smile, and head back out into the world for another fucking go.