Page 32 of Interior Design for Demons
A massive figure rounds the corner, toiling up the sloped floor toward me. The figure is clad in armored plating, with shreds of fabric like a ragged cloak rippling around it. Its face is a dull metal mask with round close-set eyeholes and a tiny grated oval for a mouth. Horns stick out straight out to each side before curving downward. The metal breastplate is streaked and clotted with gore, black and scarlet, and around the demon’s throat coils the gleaming black body of a serpent. As the demon trudges past me, the serpent lifts its graceful head, tongue flicking, and fixes one black bead of an eye on me.
I literally hold my breath until the thing passes me. I hold it so long I start to see spots across my vision.
I don’t want to follow that hideous metal-faced demon, so I cautiously edge farther down the sloping hallway, hoping maybe I’ll come to the ground floor and find a front desk of some kind. But instead I find a magnificent stairway of jade-green stone spiraling down, and down. It might be beautiful if the jade weren’t this particular hue of sickly green, and if there were better lighting instead of the occasional unforgiving blare of a naked white bulb. As I begin edging down, step by step, I notice that the railing of the jade staircase is moving, each baluster writhing and coiling. There aresnakesall over this staircase.
With a muffled shriek I retreat, determined to follow the slanting hallway back up, metal-faced demon or not—but the slope of the corridor is insane now, like a sixty-degree angle. There’s no way I can climb that smooth surface with its low-pile beige carpeting.
I press myself flat to the wall and I start to pray. Not to God—though I probably should—but to my demon protector.
“Rath,” I say aloud, “please—I know you’re pissed at me, but I need your help, okay? I’m lost. I’m scared. You like that, right? A tasty helping of fear and anxiety, right here, just for you. I know you probably don’t forgive because you’re a demon, but—look, I am sorry for what I did with Apollyon. It meant nothing, okay? Absolutely nothing. You were my first kiss in Hell. You’ve protected me—you’re my damn sponsor. Please come to me. Help me. I need you.”
A sob from the stairway grabs my attention, and I inch forward, trying to see over the railing without getting too close to the snakes. Something’s coming up the steps, a hunched figure, dark and twiggy and shadowy, like an imitation of human form assembled from bone shards and sticks and darkness. The thing hunches and hitches up the steps toward me, hollow dull groans issuing from some orifice, though I can’t see a mouth yet. Its arms crook and bend the wrong way, so very wrong—oh god—it’s pawing at its head as if it’s in pain, moaning louder. Its knees crack and bend backward, and it nearly topples headlong down the stairs. I wish itwouldfall, and tumble away from me.
“Rath,” I whisper.
The crookedy thing jerks its head up. Insects are crawling in and out of its gaping eyeholes. A hiss of rasping, hungering desire issues from its maw.
“Rath!” I scream. “Rath, I’m yours, okay? Yours! Please help me!”
Razenath cracks into existence, towering far taller than me, bending to fit beneath the high ceiling. His golden horns and his hair stream yellow flame and his ashy wings stretch wide, throwing orange sparks. He looks like a magnificent avenging angel. The crooked thing on the stairs moans and cringes, but it does not leave.
“What are you doing down here, Grace?” says Rath, bending his beautiful face and body toward me, purposely overwhelming me with his terrible grace and strength. His very pecs and abs seem to glow molten.
“I got lost,” I tell him quietly. He makes me feel very small, and very helpless. I am not a winner, triumphant—I am a weak lost lamb, shrinking in the blaze of the lion.
“Say it again,” he says. “Tell me to whom you belong.”
I swallow against the dry scratchiness in my throat. “I belong to you.”
“You will crave no one else.”
“I—” My teeth pinch my lower lip. Blue eyes, scarlet hair—a melodic voice sayingNot you, darlingand then laughing softly, derisively.
Rath frowns at my hesitation, and the crooked monstrosity mounts a step higher, then another, hissing with barely contained hunger.
If I don’t promise this, Rath might leave me to my fate. I can yield to him—it’s fine. It’s Hell, and promises can’t be binding here anyway, right?
The words seep between my teeth. “I will crave no one else.”
He exhales, a breathy laugh of triumph. “Then come, little rebel. Come to me.”
I step into his arms, and he folds me against his burning chest. His voice rumbles through my cheek. “Mine.”
A firm sense of safety mingles with the sick ache of loss in my stomach. They’re such conflicting feelings that tears spring to my eyes, and I don’t really know why. “Can we go back to my room now?”
“Of course.” Rath snarls at the maggoty monster, and it folds itself up into a broken-limbed ball and rolls away down the serpent-twined staircase. Then Rath encloses me tighter in his arms and flies up the hallway I descended, parallel to the slanting floor. I lock my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. His skin is burning hot.
“Could you turn down the heat a little?” I murmur.
He dims the glow slightly. “Better?”
“Yes.”
My cheek keeps skimming against his. He always seems to have a hint of golden scruff along his jaw, and the masculine friction of it—and of his powerful body against mine—flickers along my nerves, teasing awake that sensitive place between my legs. I can feel myself tingling, warming, liquefying more and more with each contraction of his muscles, each heaving beat of those powerful ashen wings. I mean, I’m clasping an incredibly ripped demon while he holds me close and calls me his—I defy anyone not to be turned on by that. Cautiously I shift my position so that my center is right over his groin, and I tighten my legs. There’s a telltale hardness under his pants, and I grind a little, testing him. And why shouldn’t I, because I’m not Apollyon’s human, and he’s a sneering jerk who couldn’t care less about me. I hate him and his stupid beautiful face. I hate Rath, too. Both of them, cruel monsters, idiot males—I hate them, Ihatethem so much—
Rath chuckles, the low sound vibrating through his chest into mine, making me gasp at the stimulation to my breasts. “Your hate aura is impure, little rebel. It is tangled with lust. But it tastes delicious, all the same.” And he angles his head as we fly, his hot mouth trapping mine. I am melting against him, burning, burning—writhing helplessly, wanting more. The rest of the flight back to my suite is a luscious swirl of tongues and pliant mouths and bodies crushing deeper and deeper into each other.
When we reach the room Rath practically throws me inside, and I’m so dizzy with lust that my legs buckle beneath me.
