Page 30 of The Devil's Mercy

“Mercy. Let’s bring him out, feed him, let him see how things can be. You don’t know him like I do. Calwantsthis. He wants stability and—”

“You do feel bad for him.” That was an interesting development. A positive one. A part of him had feared Aodhan would grow bored and change his mind, but if he’d developed an attachment to Calix, had formed an emotional bond with him…

Aodhan pursed his lips. “Are you testing him, or me?”

“If I confess it’s both?”

“I’ll be annoyed but not surprised.” He ran a hand through his dark brown hair. “I know you’re plotting, you always are, but you told me I could pick the first position.”

“Which you have. That’s why he’s been dangling from the ceiling.”

“I thought he’d cave by now,” Aodhan confessed.

“What happened to knowing him so well?” He snorted and then took a step toward the door. “All right. We’ll play it your way. You want to try feeding him? Let’s do that.”

“He’s not a pet.”

“No, he’s meant to be our Third, but there’s a long way to go before he’s ready to accept that. I don’t think both of us playing the good cop is going to be very helpful in getting him there, do you?”

“Good cop?” Aodhan was the one to scoff this time. “Mercy, baby, we both know there’s only one person in this house that might fit that bill, and it isn’t even close to being you.”

Correct, because if Aodhan Solace was a devil, Titus Mercer was the God that owned him.

And soon he’d own the monster Calix Valimir, too.

* * *

Despite what Aodhan thought of him—and despite how accurate those thoughts were—Titus had already taken Cal down before leaving for his shower. He found the unconscious man exactly where he’d left him, curled up on his side on the tiny bed tucked into the corner of the room that used to be used for storage.

It was directly across the hall from the kitchen, where they could easily keep an eye on the door as they went about their morning and evening routines. They’d cleared it out for this purpose, since it was also the smallest room in the three-story home. A smaller space would help sell the illusion that Calix had nothing left to lose, that his only hope was in giving himself to them completely.

Titus needed to craft the illusion that they were the only means of escape—though it wasn’t entirely untrue.

“What kind of life have you lived these past eight years?” he murmured, lowering down onto the edge of the bed. His handstroked lightly through the damp strands of blond hair, running the pale pink ends between his fingers.

Unlike Aodhan, who preferred the deep hue of red, pink had always been Titus’s favorite color. It suited him that both his lovers shared some splash of it on their person, the doctor with his eyes, and the detective with his hair.

Cal made a groggy noise and twitched, slowly coming awake. Titus didn’t rush the process, didn’t shy away. Instead, he kept petting him, allowing his touches to linger a bit longer, grow a bit bolder, with each passing second. The moment he felt the detective come fully awake, he grabbed a fistful of that precious hair at the base of Cal’s skull and used that hold to drag the man up into a sitting position.

Calix yelped, blindly reaching out to grab onto him, the blindfold still in place, preventing him from seeing who was before him.

Titus kept quiet, holding him steadily, the tight grip enough of a silent warning to keep Cal from trying to yank away. A warning that didn’t go unheeded.

Their faces were close, less than three inches apart, and Titus was forced to acknowledge that perhaps Aodhan had been right about pushing their detective too close to starvation. Though, in his defense, he hadn’t been the one delivering sexual torture on top of things.

If Aodhan had really been concerned, he could have kept his dick in his pants.

Calix’s tongue—pink, Titus noted—darted out past his dry and cracked lips, wetting them quickly. His hands clasped and unclasped the material of Titus’s t-shirt over his chest, but he didn’t fully release him. He seemed to be listening for something, feeling the situation out.

Using those instincts of his that Titus had praised earlier.

“…Mercy?” there was doubt in his tone, at first, but a second later he repeated, more firmly this time, “Do I call you that? Do I call you Titus or,” he licked his lips a second time, “do I call you Mercy?”

“What do you want to call me?”

“I…probably shouldn’t say.”

Which meant it was something bad. Titus chuckled. “Try me.”

---