Page 38 of Baking and Angels

“Oh, I don’t know. I feel like it was recently.” She pouted, which made her even more achingly cute.

Words were failing him. He had never needed to speak of such things and normally he wouldn’t feel so shy about it. Shame about sex was not something he could ever afford, and he had done too much too many times to really be affected by a trivial emotion. But what he felt and did with Helena was different. It was more than simply desire and heat, it touched his soul and cut through the shield of disinterest he had used to protect himself. It was terrifying and yet healed him at thesame time.

Or at least it had before when she had been human and he the unnatural monster.

Closing his eyes, he brought his forehead forward, cupping the back of her head to draw hers tomeet him.

“What are we doing?” she asked after a second, her words barely forming out of the whisper.

“You may eat the memory,” he said. He felt her go completely still underhis hand.

“But… won’t that destroy it for you?”she asked.

“I don’t care. It’s not one I treasure,” he said. “You mayhave it.”

She pulled away a moment, her golden eyes studying his, glintinghungrily.

“I offered myself to you, mind, body, and soul,” he affirmed, so there would be no doubt. “You need to feed your power to stay here. And I wantyou here.”

“But won’t I be doing to you what the others in… that place did to you?”

He cupped her face and pulled her in for a kiss.

It happened then. Her resistance gave way, and he could feel her slip into his mind. It was slower than the first time he had eaten her memory of the taste of chocolate cake. Then he had simply wanted to do her as little harm as possible. In quick and out again, capturing the delectable memory of the taste of cake. At the time, it was a shadow of what a real taste would be, but more than he had known in ages.

But he recognized this was Helena’s first time. She was cautious, reaching out on instinct to go where she didn’t belong. Ice knifed throughhis brain.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she breathed, pulling away, but he locked his hand behind her head to keep herin place.

“It’s alright,” he breathed. “I’ll live. Just take it intoyourself.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered. Her hand snaked around to cup his own head from behind.

“That’s it,” he confirmed as he felt her move into him again. And then the memory ignited, playing out…

She sat across from him in the car. She had been smiling shyly at him all morning. He could smell it from where he sat. The musk of her desire, the rapid beating of her heart as loud as a drum, at least tohis ears.

He knew what was coming before she said it. He simply waited, with his ankle crossing his knee, his hands resting on both as the train rocked them hard from side to side. After five days of traveling, he was getting used to thesensation.

The motion was also making his mistress’s desires worse.

“If I order you to, you have to do anything I ask, correct?” Her handfan fluttered as she asked the question, which did little to move the summer air in the car.

“As you command, my lady,” he said.

She snapped the fan together. “Then, kiss me,” she ordered, sitting up a little straighter in her seat, the training she had received in being a lady who could command a room manifesting itself.

He dropped his crossed foot and leaned forward, letting his grin slide onto his face. This had been easy. Barely a week and this innocent ingenue was ready to partake of his pleasures. But it wasn’t the prospect of sex that excited him; it was the thrill of taking the energy of her body. She was a rich vein that would increase his wealth significantly.

“Lift your skirt,” he said to her, his voice low andrumbling.

It was bold. She could buck.

Maybe that was why he did it. Some small part of him wanted to give her a chance to escape what was about to happen. She would never be the same afterward. There was a good chance that if she only did this with him once, she wouldn’t even notice that she had even lost anything until she was quite old and it was too late. If she only congressed with a demon once, the damage would be minimal to her long-term health.

Her eyes went wide, her breath caught.

Then slowly, she lifted her skirt, bringing it up past her knees, the cloth trembling with the excitement and terror that always came with defying the forbidden. She hesitated when the cloth reached her mid-thigh. The garters she wore were now clearly visible, but as he suspected, she didn’t wear any drawers due to the heat of the year. It was more than enough.

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