Page 9 of Chaos Demons

“That’s a good start,” she said snuggling closer to my side, both of her arms wrapping around my arm. “Tell me more.”

“You smell like lavender and lemon, and your skin is soft and smooth and perfect. Also… your feet, they’re perfect,” I added. “A lot of women have… ah… not-so-nice feet, but yours are delicate and perfectly formed.”

“That’s… interesting. Go on.”

“Your lips are like delicate rose petals, soft and velvety, and kissing you is like diving into a world of soft warmth and delicate passion.”

“Ooooh, wow, okay,” she said, her voice breathy. “I’m guessing we’re going to skip lunch and go straight todessertyet again?”

I laughed. It had become a thing between us ever since our first outing. “Dessert” meant using our mouths to taste all the sweetness of each other, and so far, in the three weeks since I’d met Ana, we’d kept ourselves to oral sex and some manual stimulation. I’d wanted to take it slow with her, get to know her before we finally broke the seal on penetration.

And a big part of me did want to skip lunch and go straight to “dessert.” My beast was roused by her aspect, becoming agitated and active, and it wanted to mate with her, consume her, dominate her.

The odd thing was Ana’s voice also soothed my wolf in a way I’d never encountered before. Whenever she spoke, the beast became as mild as a puppy, content and quiet.

I hadn’t understood it at first, but I was pretty sure I did now. My wolfknewAna was its ideal mate, and her aspect of sex got it extremely wound up, needing to be with her. At the same time, my wolf also recognized her as a true companion, and her voice — the expression of her true self over and above any daemon aspects — calmed it. It was one of the reasons I alsoknewI had to be with her. No one affected me like she did.

And that meant that beforedessert, I wanted an appetizer of a different sort.

“Ana… can we… talk?” I asked, a bit hesitant to bring it up, given how rough a time she’d been having at home.

“Aren’t we talking?” she said with a bit of a giggle. That sound filled me with joy. She was feeling better, happier.

“I want to talk about… you… about… your quest to find out who you are.”

“Oh?” She didn’t entirely pull away from me, but she inched away a little to look up at me with her stunning silver-blue eyes. “You do?”

I smiled reassuringly. “I want to help you.”

“You do?” she repeated with a surprised smile.

I laughed. “Yes.”

I didn’t explain why in that moment because my reason was selfish. Ana claimed she wasn’t ready for love, for a deep relationship, because she didn’t know who she was. Whereas I desperately wanted to have a much deeper relationship with her.

I loved her. I wanted her to be happy, and by helping her figure out who she was, I hoped I’d achieve her goal… and mine.

“I’ve had some thoughts,” I said, “if you want to hear them?”

“You have? Oh… sure!” She leaned into me again, making my wolf sigh with contentment.

“I know you want to know who your birth parents were,” I said. “But I think you can know who you are without that. If you know who they were, all that really tells you is whotheywere. You’ve spent your entire life without them. They didn’t influence your upbringing in any way. They’re just… genetics. And knowing your genetics doesn’t really tell you who you are on the inside.”

She sighed. “I’m listening,” she said with a hint of coolness to her voice. She hadn’t liked hearing that, as I’d suspected, but I pushed on.

“I think the best way to know who you are is to simply list things you know about yourself and see what that tells you,” I continued.

“But I feel like I know so little,” she replied, her voice suddenly small as her grip around my arm tightened.

“I think you know more than you think,” I told her. “Give it a shot. What do you know about yourself?”

She sighed. “I know I’m sexy, but then again, I’m a sex daemon, so I don’t know if that counts.”

“Oh… it counts, trust me,” I replied, waggling my eyebrows suggestively at her, making her giggle.

“Good to know.” But her mirth slipped away and she blew out another breath. “I guess… along those lines, I blossomed early and I know I was drawn to bad boys and they were drawn to me. At least, that’s how I used to be. I don’t think you’re a bad boy. You’re one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known, even if you have a world-ending beast within you.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, touched that she saw me formeand not for the monster inside me.

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