Page 37 of Demon's Bane

My cheeks burn with mortification as I toss the covers back and stumble across the room to my dresser. The very last thing I need to do is give my live-in demon a wake-up call with the scent of my…

Oh, my Goddess, I can’t even bring myself to think about it.

With everything else going on and how unsettled I feel about what happened at the Veil last night, I also haveno businessthinking about it. Absolutely none.

Pulling on my clothes and making a quick pit stop in the bathroom to brush my teeth, fix my hair, and put on some makeup, I creep down the hall toward the front door.

There’s no sound coming from the guest room, and the door stays mercifully shut as I get ready to leave.

I wonder if Rhett’s sleeping unglamoured.

How would that even work? I can’t imagine sleeping with wings would be very comfortable—especially on a creaky old futon—but I suppose after a lifetime of dealing with them, he’s probably got it down.

As I reach the front door, I imagine him laying there—stomach down, black wings spread wide. I imagine what it would be like to cuddle up next to him, under the protection of one of those powerful wings, tucked in close to his warm, muscular body, close enough to reach out and…

“Stop,” I mutter to myself as the door shuts behind me. “Enough.”

There’s no point in wondering about it. Not when Rhett will be gone in a few days. Not when we’ve still got so much more to figure out, and so much on the line between our realms.

With that in mind, I should know better than to get anywhere near all that temptation.

Rhett and I spend the next few days settling into… whatever we are now.

He still comes down to hang out in the shop each day, and though none of my regulars ask me about it outright, the unspoken consensus in the shop seems to be that he’s my new squeeze.

Which, not totally unfair considering my last boyfriend, David, also used to haunt Celestial Blends when we were together. But that’s where the similarities end.

Not that I can say anything about it. What would I even tell them?

Hey, ignore the broody man sitting in the corner. He’s not here for any reason at all. What’s that? Why does he look a little fuzzy around the edges? No, nope, he definitely doesn’t.

So I try to be cool, try to act like everything’s totally normal, and pointedly ignore the whisper of magick that teases at the edges of my mind each day in the shop.

And every night, there’s a fullyunglamoured demon hanging out in my apartment.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to the sight of him.

So much harsh, rugged beauty. So much power in that muscled, winged body of his. Crimson eyes I sometimes think I can almost feel watching me move around the apartment, even if they’re always focused elsewhere when I turn to look.

With the removal of his glamour, some of the lingering tension between us slides away. Not enough to make any of this feel remotely near normal, but at least enough to get the conversation flowing.

I tell him a little about the shop and how Allie and I both moved to Beech Bay after we graduated from college. He tells me about the places he’s seen in the demon realm, the cities he worked in and traveled through after leaving his village.

We trade questions and stories and stay up later than we should, talking about everything in common and everything that’s different between our realms. And, just like I thought I would, I don’t seem to ever run out of questions to ask him.

We even take a—glamoured—trip outside the apartment one evening.

Apparently the disguise Esme gave him comes with its own set of randomly generating clothes, but once he takes it off, he’s stuck in the set he came to this realm in. Since it wouldn’t be totally fair to make him lounge around every night in his pair of tightly fitted leather pants and black tunic shirt—despite my own feelings about that particular fashion choice—I take him to Target to do a little shopping.

Rhett is fascinated by the store, asking about a thousand questions as we make our way through the aisles. At least until I have to tell him to keep his voice down when a very sweet-looking, very confused old lady gives us a concerned glance when he asks if there’s a swordsmith in residence.

Steering him toward the men’s clothing department, I tell him to pick out a few things. The sizes are a bit of a guesstimate as he tries to choose clothes that will fit his demon frame, but I’m more amused than anything watching to see what he picks. He tosses in a couple boxer-briefs that I am definitely not imagining on him, and a few pairs of lounge pants.

Including a pair of light gray sweats I absolutely never should have allowed into the cart.

He steps out of the spare bedroom wearing them a few minutes after we get back from the store, and the noise that comes out of me is somewhere between a choked gasp and a full-on coughing fit as he walks into the room.

“What? Do they not look right?”

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