She was beautiful, and she was mine, despite that she still looked ready to vomit. I cupped her cheek and ran my thumb across the delicate curve of her jaw before brushing my thumb over her lips. I would give almost anything to taste her and learn the stroke of her tongue, but I could never risk doing to Aisling what I did to Sarah.
I moved my thumb away.
“But… but how is that possible?” she whispered.
“That’s the way demons work.”
“So, I guess that rules out the possibility of me being an angel instead of a demon?”
I pondered this for a minute. “Probably, but I still think it’s worth asking one of the angels about your ability to see souls.”
She didn’t blink as she continued to stare at me. “Are you saying we’re supposed to be bound together for eternity now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m only twenty-five.”
“I’m only twenty-six.”
“I wasn’t looking to settle down. I was just looking for a… a…”
“Good fuck?”
I twisted the sheets in my hands at the idea of her with another man, but of course, there were other men. She wasn’t a virgin that first night. She lived with the demons, and she was a demon, which meant there were probably a fair number of men before me.
I wanted to kill every one of them, and I would if one of them dared to touch her again. Taking calming breaths, I gritted my teeth against my overwhelming impulse to have their blood staining my hands as I tore them to pieces. Enough blood spilled yesterday, but I’d never felt this possessive of anyone before.
“That’s exactly what I was looking for,” she said, though I detected a hint of hurt and annoyance in her clipped tone. Then her eyes narrowed on me. “I certainly wasn’t trying to trap a man.”
I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny about this. “And I wasn’t trying to trap a woman. I was also looking for a good time.”
She smiled halfheartedly. “It was a good time.”
“Yes, it was.”
The best time I’d ever had with a woman, and my hunger was still more satisfied with her than with anyone else before her. Even after the battle, and the fact I hadn’t taken as much from her as I did with some of my other partners, I was still more sated than ever before. A Chosen made a demon stronger and, in my case, she also nourished me more.
She was also an end to my lonely existence—a lifeline in a world I was drowning in before. But I suspected Aisling, and every other woman, did not want to hear they were bound to a man who was relieved to have them.
It would probably result in her punching me in the face. I hadn’t missed the fury that blazed through her when I told her that it wasn’t her, it was me when it came to kissing. I couldn’t believe those words had come from my mouth; I’d always scoffed at the guys who uttered that cliché saying, but the words popped out before I could stop them.
“Maybe we can meet up again in a year or something,” she said.
My hands tore into the sheets. “You want other men?”
“I didn’t say that, but I’m not ready to settle down. It’s not part of my plan right now.”
“And what is your plan?” I grated, which only caused her eyes to narrow more.
“To survive the next day and then the next and the next.”
“And you can’t do that with a Chosen?”
“Look, my life has been tossed upside down numerous times; I’m not ready for another curveball right now. Maybe we can discuss this again after we’ve had time to think about it more. We can meet up again in six months.”
“No.”
She looked like I’d poked her in the eye. “No?”
“No. Maybe this isn’t what either of us wanted, but it’s done.”
I had wanted to find my Chosen, but she didn’t need to know that either. And what was I going to say to her? I wanted this, but I didn’t know it was you I wanted. Another thing all women were eager to hear from the man they would spend eternity with. I didn’t have much experience in sweet talk, but I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
This was not the way I expected finding my Chosen to go, but then I don’t know what I’d expected. Had I thought it would be easy? No, I’d seen enough of my friends find their Chosen to know it wouldn’t be easy.
As a demon, I did expect her to be more open to this, but she’d been human for more of her life than not. She’d probably expected to meet someone, date for a while, get engaged, and then get married.
“I know you weren’t expecting to have sex and have your life tied to another, and neither was I, but we can’t change it,” I said.
Her nostrils flared as she leaned closer to me. Despite the rage she radiated, I found myself entranced by her when red flickered through her eyes. I suspected that red was another new development of her newfound demonhood. I probably should have been concerned I’d pushed her too far, she had de-nutted a demon after all, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from hers.
“I don’t care who you are; you don’t own or control me. If I decide it’s going to change, then it will change,” she said.
“The Chosen bond unites us for the rest of our lives.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to shack up and start playing house together. You can go on about your life, and I can go on with mine if I choose to.”
My teeth grated together as I tried to navigate this minefield. I wanted to bend her to my will, but that was impossible. If I attempted to order her around, she’d only pull further away. My Chosen was a stubborn, infuriating woman, but I couldn’t help admiring her. She was a fighter, and scared, and if I pushed her too far, we’d fight each other for the rest of our days.
I hadn’t known her long, but she’d made it clear she knew what she wanted. She wasn’t a woman who wavered; she was a woman who set her sights on something and got it. If she decided to spend six months without me, she would do it no matter how unhappy it made us.
“Neither of us expected this to happen, but now we have to learn to live with it,” I said. “And constantly fighting each other will make for an eternity of misery.”
Her eyes remained narrowed on me, and those cute little fangs were still on display, but her body relaxed, and the red vanished from her eyes. However, I sensed she’d hit me if I said the wrong thing. The only problem was, I didn’t know the right thing to say.
“We may not have expected this, but we should make the most of it,” I said.
“And what does that mean?”
What did that mean? Unable to resist, I rested my hand against her cheek and ran my thumb over her lips while I pondered her question. And then I said the words that probably no other canagh demon had ever uttered.
“It means we get to know each other better… outside of the bedroom.”
She quirked an eyebrow, but I saw a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “And what if we discover we hate each other?”
The possibility of an eternity with a woman I despised made my stomach clench. What if the two demons in the Chosen relationship hated each other? I’d never considered the possibility before; I’d only ever seen them in love. However, it could be possible they started out hating each other, or that centuries of telling the same demon to pick up their socks made them ready to kill.
I would rather spend the rest of my life alone than with someone I loathed and who hated me in return. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that option.
“That’s something we’ll deal with if it happens,” I said. “But so far, I like what I know about you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You only know what it’s like to fuck me.”
I leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “And I’ve more than liked every second of it.”
Grasping her hand, I enclosed it on my hardening cock. For the first time since becoming a canagh demon, I wasn’t ravenous, but I still couldn’t get enough of her. She melted against me before pulling away.
“No,” she said as she released my
shaft. “You said we should get to know each other better outside of the bedroom, and we’re going to do that. No more touching.”
I bit back my groan of disappointment and leaned back, but I kept my hand on her hip until she lifted it and rested it on the bed. She patted it before she removed her hand. I could almost taste her desire as her nipples tightened, and I imagined bending my head to kiss her flesh.
Seeming to sense my thoughts, she flung back the blankets and scooted down the mattress to the end of the bed. Rolling onto my back, I propped myself against the headboard as she jumped up. I admired the sway of her hips and firm ass as she strode over to the closet.
Chapter Fourteen
Hawk
She pulled open the closet doors to reveal a couple of my shirts and pants within; she removed a shirt and slipped it on. The bottom brushed her knees and exposed the curve of her breasts as she buttoned it. She had no idea seeing her in my shirt only made her more alluring, and I wasn’t going to tell her as I folded my hands behind my head.
“I also know you’re a fighter,” I said. “At any time, you could have given up in that battle.”
“And died.”
“But you didn’t.”
She lifted her head from the buttons and in the dim glow of the moon, I saw the anguish on her face. “So many others did.”
I almost climbed off the bed and went to her, but I stopped myself. We were getting to know each other, and she’d said no touching. “I know. But we damaged them more than they damaged us yesterday, and we are going to finish them.”
“I hope so.” She walked over and sat in the chair in the corner, putting some distance between us.
Smart woman.
I watched as she settled onto the chair with elegant grace. She pulled the shirt down when it rode up her thigh to expose the curve of her ass. I tongued my fangs when they throbbed with the need to sink into her flesh, but I didn’t move.
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself,” she said.
“What would you like to know?”
“What’s your last name?”
“Hawkson.”
She pursed her mouth as she crossed her legs. I admired the muscles in her calf while she kicked her leg in the air. “So that’s why they call you Hawk.”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s your first name?”
I glanced at the ceiling; my first name wasn’t something I shared regularly, and few knew it, but I couldn’t keep it from her. “Sue.”
“Sue?”
“Yes. My mom was a big Johnny Cash fan.”
She gawked at me before chuckling. “She named you after the song ‘A Boy Named Sue’?”
“You know the song?”
“One of my daddy’s favorites.”
The hint of her southern accent was thicker when she said this.
“Then you know the story in the song,” I said.
“The boy’s father leaves him, but before he goes, he names him Sue in the hopes it will make him tougher. Your dad left?”
“He died in a plane crash before I was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It would have been nice to know him, but that was never an option, and I accepted it a long time ago. My mom told me stories about him, and he was a good man. Dax, my stepfather, was my dad. I was two when they started dating, and he always treated me like his son, even after my sisters were born.”
“Was your dad?”
“He died of cancer when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
This time, I couldn’t shrug it off. I hadn’t known my real dad, but my stepfather’s death devastated us all.
“It was a… difficult time.” Those words couldn’t begin to explain how shitty that time in our lives was. “The war occurred two years before he died. Until then, we never had to struggle for anything. Dax was a doctor; we had a big house, and he’d planned well enough that his life insurance and savings would keep us going after his death.”
“But money didn’t matter after the war.”
“Exactly. When you go from having luxury cars, a boat, and designer clothes to nothing, it’s a bit of a shock. We still had our house; it’s not like the banks were around to take those back anymore, but trying to keep it protected from looters or those trying to upgrade their housing was difficult. We abandoned it a few weeks after the war.”
“Where did you go?”
“All our family was in Connecticut, and after the war, the bridges to Cape Cod were shut down, so we had no way of getting to them. We lived in our car until we moved into a small, abandoned ranch house that I discovered. We were fortunate in the beginning because people would trade food for Dax’s services, but he got sick a year later and was gone by the next year.”
“What did you do afterward?” Aisling asked.
“In those first months, I spent a lot of time begging for food in the streets and bringing home whatever scraps I could. My mom had learned a lot from Dax and tried to keep his practice going, but she wasn’t as good at it, and people didn’t trust her as much, but we still got some food that way. Neither of us wanted my sisters on the street, so we tried to keep them out of it, but they weren’t stupid, and by then they were far from naïve.”
“What did they do?” Aisling asked.
“They would sneak out to beg for food too, but when I found out, I told my mom. It was the first time I ever saw her lose her temper and hit one of us. I’m not sure who cried more, my mom or my sister. That was when I knew something had to change, but I wasn’t sure what to do. By then, I’d stopped being a cute kid people felt sorry for; I’d grown five inches and become a nuisance.
“Because I was taller, I tried to volunteer for the wall at fifteen, but one of my old teachers ratted me out. After that, I started stealing. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I didn’t know what else to do. I refused to let something happen to one of my sisters because they were on the streets, and I couldn’t stand the broken look in my mom’s eyes anymore. She’d always been young and radiant, but she aged ten years in a matter of months.”
Aisling pulled her feet onto the chair and wrapped her arm around her legs while she studied me. “They never caught you?”
“No, thankfully.” If someone did catch me, they might have killed me instead of turning me over to the Guards for punishment. “After I turned sixteen, I volunteered for the wall and made sure they never had to beg for anything again.” The government took care of the families of volunteers.
“My mom cried so hard she soaked my shirt, but we knew I had to go,” I continued. “I used to write to them every day, and when the trucks came back from their yearly volunteer trip to my town, I’d have hundreds of letters from her and my sisters. I only read a few every day so they would last all year.”
“You used to write them?” she asked.
Unable to hold her gaze, I stared at the curtains covering the windows as anger and sorrow churned in my chest. “Lucifer killed them after he fled Hell.”
Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”
Only a little over a year had passed since Lucifer slaughtered my family; the grief of their loss still twisted like a knife in my chest. Even with the dangers of the Wilds to distract me, I’d spent a great deal of time grieving the loss of the family I volunteered to save.
I signed my life away to make sure they survived, and in a fit of rage, Lucifer destroyed them, everyone in my town, River’s town, and another town bordering ours. I hadn’t met River until we were both at the wall, but we’d grown up only miles away from each other.
“Hawk…”
Her words trailed off when I looked at her, and she started to rise, but I held up my hand to halt her. “Don’t come to me because you feel sorry for me. You’ll come to me because you’re ready for me and everything that comes with us, but not before then.”
She opened her mouth to protest but then closed it again and settled onto the c
hair. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness as she studied me before asking, “How many sisters did you have?”
“Three and they were pretty awesome.”
She smiled as she propped her elbow on the arm of the chair and rested her head on her hand. “What were their names?”
It took me a minute to answer around the lump in my throat. “The oldest was Jen. She had hair the same color as mine and clear blue eyes. She was so serious about everything and had this analytical way of looking at everything. As she got older, she would spend hours reading books and absorbing knowledge that she had to share with everyone.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I recalled her following me around with her nose in a book while she told me about the different rock formations. I’d found it endlessly annoying and would often shut a door in front of her just to have her walk into it because she was still staring at her book.
“You’re a jerk!” she’d yell at me and then proceed to keep reading until I put on my headphones and cranked up the music to drowned her out.
Then, the war came, and our lives turned upside down. Jen stopped reading books to focus all her energy on making sure her younger sisters were taken care of while everyone else worked to bring in food.
“Sherry was my middle sister,” I said. “She was… she was like no one I’ve ever met before. I’ve never known anyone who loved life as much as her. Everything delighted her, and she had this beautiful laugh. When she laughed, people stopped what they were doing to look at her, and they would smile or laugh too because it was impossible not to laugh with Sherry. She had this beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes that never stopped twinkling. My mom used to swear she smiled in her sleep, and I believed her.
“And the youngest was Judy. She was painfully shy but the sweetest of the three. She’d bring me a book to read her, curl up in my lap, and stick her thumb in her mouth. When she fell asleep, I’d sit there for hours waiting for her to wake up again because I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her.”
If I let myself think about it, I could still feel her silken brown hair against my chin as her brown eyes stared at me. Her tiny body had been so warm, and she was so trusting.
Kiss of Death: Hell on Earth Series, Book 3 Page 9