Page 64 of Interior Design for Demons
“No,” I murmur. “I want all the marks of you. I want you to eat me alive so I can live safe inside you forever.”
“Now who’s being strange?” His hand smooths along my thigh.
“I don’t even care.” Sleepy satisfaction weighs my limbs. “Apollyon, I don’t want to die. If I’m dead we can’t ever do this again.”
A pained note enters his voice. “I know.”
“I really want to go home. But when I do, I probably won’t see you again. So you see why I can’t love you—there’s no future in it.”
He clears his throat, looking away. He’s propped on an elbow beside me, his coat discarded and his black shirt half-open, showing part of his pale, well-cut chest and the angle of his white throat. “What if you stayed here? Even if you reach the top three? You could remain in Hell, with me—”
“Stay?” I sit up. “In Hell? I hate it here. Just think about this night—all the horrors—Apollyon, how can you possibly enjoy an event like this?”
He shrugs. “I don’t enjoy all of it. I have my limits. Not all demons relish every form of torture and depravity.”
“But youlikebeing a demon, and living in Hell.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You want to keep your form and your rank, and climb higher if you can.”
“Perhaps.” His expression is raw, pleading. “And you can help me do that. I need you here, Grace.”
“That’s gratifying and all, but—”
“No, you don’t understand.” He closes his eyes briefly, biting his lower lip. “You’re the cure. My cure, the thing that will keep me from changing.”
My whole body freezes. “What?”
“There’s a precedent for it,” he says eagerly. “A demon who was devolving fell in love with a human, and gradually was able to reclaim her human aspect. She became stable again, able to control her form and her powers. As long as she remained monogamous, paired with that one human, she was no longer in danger of degrading. There are other stories, too, about demons who mate with one human, and who remain faithfully devoted to that human. They don’t suffer the decline.”
My heart plummets, spinning into the dark bowels of the Pit itself.
“I’m your cure,” I repeat faintly. “That’s why you—oh god. I thought you actually cared about me.”
“I do.” He frowns, confused.
“No, you don’t. You’re using me as medicine to stave off your condition, because you’re so terrified of losing yourself.” The words leak through my clenched teeth, and I shove him away, lunging to my feet. “You’re as bad as Rath.”
He flinches as if I’d struck him. “Don’t say that.”
“You don’t understand what love isat all.” I’m nearly shouting now. “Love is about doing what’s best for someone else, what makes them safe and happy. Not just when it comes to sex, okay? Sure, you’re good with your tongue, and you always take care of me first, but real love is unselfish in other places besides the bedroom.”
“We’re not in a bedroom—”
“Shut up!” I screech, fists clenched, tears burning in my eyes. “You have to be willing to sacrifice! You can’t just think about yourself, okay?”
“What aboutyou?” He scrambles to his feet, blue eyes furiously bright. “You’re thinking about yourself too! You don’t care that I’m breaking down, that I’m going to become a dragon forever, or that my dragon form is going to grow warped and crazed and ugly. You don’t care that I’ll be locked in the Pit and forced to eat the souls of the damned for eternity. You only care about returning to your precious Earthly plane and your inane college classes where you can forget that I exist! You pretended to care about me, and by your own little love rules, youdon’t!”
“They’re notmylove rules!” I shout. “They’re everyone’s love rules—the universal love rules.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“I don’t know!”
We stand there, flushed, seething at each other.
I pick up my scanty clothing and pull it on. “Take me back to my room.”
He doesn’t flinch at my commanding tone. He simply grips my upper arms and the world blurs around us, speeding past until we stop short at the door of my suite. As I’m about to open the door, his arm blocks my way, and he leans in, scarlet silky hair and blue eyes andbeauty, so much selfish, false, wicked beauty.
“I would defy all of Hell for you,” he whispers.
