Page 62 of Demon's Desire

“Take a minute,” he whispered. “Just relax. You don’t have to protect anyone. You don’t have to worry about anyone. Just… relax for a minute.”

I swallowed hard at his words. I hadn’t really realized it until he said it, but there was a lot on my shoulders. Even after we’d gotten food and gotten back to the apartment, I’d been trying to make sure not to say the wrong thing and upset Soul or Kelly. I didn’t want to make them nervous or panicked like I was, so I’d been trying to hide it.

“Your heart is racing,” he noted, rubbing my shoulders.

I nodded slowly. “I’m really scared… We could have died tonight… If we got stuck upstairs and the fire spread, or if we got knocked over when people were storming out… I really thought–” My voice cracked, so I stopped talking.

“You can say it,” he assured me. “That feeling won’t go away if you try to ignore it.”

I took a deep breath. My chest felt heavy. “I thought I was going to die. When that first person said ‘fire’… The night of Torie and Mica’s party, I knew what to do. I knew how to keep everyone safe… Tonight, I had no idea… I felt so helpless, like it was all my fault–”

“What?” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me around to face him. “Why on Earth did you feel like it was your fault?”

I frowned. I didn’t even realize that I’d said that out loud. “Um… I don’t know… I don’t…” I looked down and shook my head, running my fingers through my hair. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” He moved his hand to cup my chin and raised my head up to look at him. “Why did you feel like that?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “It was just… this feeling I got…”

He pulled me into a hug one more time. “Nothing was your fault. Just the opposite. You saved people. You saved yourself. You saved Kelly. You saved me.”

I nodded slowly. “It was… It’s not a coincidence, right?”

He hesitated for a moment before finally answering. “No… No, I don’t think it was. I think he set the fire hoping to trap me upstairs. When people started stampeding, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the building if I hadn’t already been at the stairs. He probably realized after he spoke to you that you would try to get me out.”

I closed my eyes for a second, leaning into him. “What do we do now?” I whispered. “He’ll keep following us…”

“We’re going to find a solution,” he assured me. “As soon as we figure out how to separate ourselves, things can go back to normal, and he’ll leave you alone.”

“All right.” I took a deep breath. “Thank you…”

“Of course.” He leaned down and kissed my head again, like he’d done at the club.

I looked up at him, surprised. My eyes caught his. For a moment, we just stayed like that, staring at each other. I wanted to ask him why he’d done that, but… I didn’t. Instead, I pushed up on my toes and pressed my lips against his.

I remembered what it had been like that first night when I kissed him. He’d been different. He hadn’t been as tall, and he hadn’t been a demon, not to me. But it had felt the same… It felt right, even comfortable, in a strange way. It was so freeing in so many ways. That night, it felt like the start of a whole new world. Now, I felt the same thing.

After a moment, I pulled back, my cheeks flushing. “Um… It’s late. We should go to bed.”

Soul watched me for a moment before nodding slowly. “Of course.”

I pulled away and shut the lights off, quickly crawling into bed. I felt him get under the blanket beside me. I was about to tell him good night when I felt him drape his arm across my shoulder. He wasn’t hugging me, per se, just resting his arm against me. Still, it made my heart race, and I was sure he knew it.

“Good night, Mia,” he whispered.

“Night, Soul…”

It took a while for me to fall asleep. I was half-awake for a bit as my mind oscillated between thoughts of the club, thoughts of Soul, and thoughts of how my mother would react if she knew I’d willingly kissed a demon. Not only that, I’d enjoyed it. It was overwhelming. Still, eventually, exhaustion won out, and I fell asleep.

The next morning, I didn’t wake up until around ten AM since I’d been up so late. Soul was already up, but he came through the door as soon as I sat up, and he was holding a cup of coffee.

“Good morning,” he said as he sat on the end of the bed.

“Morning.” I rubbed my face and wiped the dust out of my eyes. “Happy Halloween. How do you do that? How do you know to walk in the door right when I wake up?”

Soul laughed as he handed me the coffee cup. “If it’s quiet, I can hear your heartbeat, remember? It starts to speed up when you’re about to wake. I know.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes as I took a sip. “That’s weird.”