Page 3 of Run Like the Devil

I’d gotten the agreement of the other Demon Lords to overthrow Hubis, and Gorrin had shown up with his fancy fucking wings. My cheeks burned as I thought about what had happened after that.

Which made me realize all the aches and pains in my body, a sure sign that I hadn’t imagined that all.

And a naked Gorrin in bed beside me also helped sell that point.

I gulped hard, and in response, Gorrin’s eyes snapped open, the familiar gold of them almost startling.

It was one thing before, when we’d both been so taken by passion, but now? Now reality crept in like that fucking sunlight and lit up the truth.

Gorrin isn’t dead.

I reached out and touched his chest, unwilling to fully believe it still.

He set his hand over mine and squeezed, saying nothing. Still, the touch let it finally sink in.

I hadn’t killed him. I’d spent all that time blaming myself, hating myself, suffering with guilt so deep I didn’t think I’d ever escape it, but I hadn’t killed him at all.

The thought brought back all my suffering, the panic attacks, the times where I wanted to close my eyes and never wake up again.

And in response to those memories?

I curled my hand into a fist and punched him.

Fuck him, and not in the fuck way we already had.

“You never change.” Gorrin didn’t react at all to the hit. Despite his already darkening skin, despite it having to have hurt, he hadn’t even flinched.

Show-off.

“I thought you were dead.” I shoved away from him.

He let me go, choosing to sit up instead. It let me get a good look at his body, and boy had I left my share of marks on him. He had small bite marks and deep scratches all over him, signs of my need. Not that he was the only one.

One glance down at my front showed the same, like we’d been animals desperate to leave our claims on one another.

“I know you did.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” I snapped. “How are you here? I saw you die!”

“You wounded me severely,” he admitted. “But you didn’t kill me.”

“You told me that dagger would kill anything. I watched it kill Azael.” Just saying that took me back to Azael’s corpse lying on the floor, unmoving. It also brought back the memory of Gorrin’s body turning to dust before my eyes, collapsing in on itself.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but Gorrin’s body hadn’t reacted the same, had it?

“The dagger is bound to you, so it only works based on your feelings, your desires. Some part of you hesitated, so while it injured me, it didn’t kill me.”

I pressed my lips together and kept my hands in tight fists, wanting to strike him again, to make him understand just how much he’d hurt me. Instead, I used my words. I’d learned that beating sense into a person never worked. “Why did you let me believe you were dead, then? Do you have any idea how much I suffered!”

He let out a sigh, the first sign of him feeling a damned thing. “You stabbing me at all said you wanted me gone. How was I supposed to face you after that? I’d pushed you so far that you stabbed me. I did enough that you snapped, that a part of you broke, that you did something you would have never done otherwise. You believed me dead, so it seemed a kinder choice to leave you be. Clearly, I was only hurting you.”

I dropped my gaze, unable to look at him and think at the same time. “And the wings?” They were gone now, but that didn’t erase my memory. “Demons don’t have wings like that, which means you’ve been lying to me from the start, right?”

He sighed, the sound loud in the silent room. “There is no reason to hide it anymore, I guess. Yes, I’m an angel.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. I was the first angel that Hubis made, back before he created humans.”