He pulls away and looks at me as if I’m lost. Like I’m some toy that he’s remembering from his childhood that he doesn’t know where he put me. And he may never find me again. Or that part of him that even understood why he wanted me by his side all the time.
“I don’t think that’s the right move. I think we are just struggling right now, Riley. And this is a lot to face for people so young. I’m sorry for the things that I said and if I made you feel like I wanted to be with someone else. Just because you are mad at me and because it’s not working right this second doesn’t mean it’ll never work. But if you want me to go for now, I will. I will respect that. Give you your space. But I would like to still come for your birthday, if I can? And maybe by then this will cool down.”
I shake my head, but what I mean by that is that I don’t think things will cool down by then. Things will only cool down once the Magistrate has paid for what they are doing and is stopped in their tracks.
“I don’t know. I mean, of course I want you here for my birthday, but I don’t want to cause any trouble. Don’t want to fight. It isn’t that I want you to go. I think you need to go. Your girlfriend’s calling.” I nod to it as his phone rings again, just assuming that it’s her. I don’t really want to know. And I hope that he makes sure I can’t hear him when he answers, because I don’t want to hear what he says to her. If it’s anything like what he said to me in the beginning.
Chapter Nine
The rest of the night I can't sleep. I go back and forth between crying bloody tears all over my bed as I toss and turn and being angry. So angry that I offer to take Ursula back out to hunt and to run in the wilderness of the mountains.
I am not typically the hiking type, but right now, I need a place to vent.
Guilt wracks me as I let her loose so I can be alone to ravage what I can find, screaming and cursing him with my words.
None of it is real, none of it sticks. It's just the pain coming out before it eats me alive.
Some people talk about how relationships can end and leave behind scars. I never knew what they meant until now. It's like I can sense the rips in my heart, cracks growing like in the summer drought. My whole body feels like it has cuts and scrapes, and maybe it does from my tantrum in the mountains, but I think it’s deeper than that.
Will anyone be able to see it tomorrow? My pain?
I can't skip school, even though I don’t want to see Kagan. I don’t want to face what’s become of us so head on, but there will be too many questions from the wrong people if I don’t show.
I guess the one thing I have to look forward to tomorrow is that I get to be public with my relationship with Dru. I don’t know how he will react to it, but it’s a comfort to know I won’t always be walking the halls alone. Maybe I won’t even have to face Kagan alone.
When I get back to my bed in the wee hours of the morning I cannot force my eyes to close though I am all cried out. So, I pull out my phone and text the one person I can talk to right now that might be awake.
I may regret it, already being far too needy in the first 24 hours of our officialness, but I need him there tomorrow. If he doesn’t want to be around me after that so much, that’s fine. Just tomorrow.
Hey.
I really should think of some better greetings. My men deserve more than a trivial "hey".
Hey, thought you were supposed to be wrapped in the arms of another tonight. Couldn’t quit thinking of me?
I can’t believe I actually crack a small smile at his antics. What a silly demon.
Long story, but there's no arms here but mine right now.
Ah. Asshole strikes again. Need me to make him jealous tomorrow?
I don't want to use you. You already said you felt like you were a second or third choice. I just hurt is all. Angry. Upset. I don’t know how to face him.
Nah, sounds like fun. He deserves it. Leave it up to me. See you soon.
I turn on my side and cozy up under my blanket as Ursula jumps on the bed with ne, a rarity that I appreciate. I bet she can tell I am not taking it well.
Soon, I finally get the couple hours of sleep I need to function.
The next morning, I wake up with almost no time to get ready and get to class, which is fine by me since I want as little down time as possible walking into that classroom with Kagan.
We really didn’t think this through when we had that fight and how we’d have to face each other.
But when you're planning a date, most people don’t think of ending it with a break up. At least, I hope not.
When I get to the hall where his class is, I hesitate, until I see Dru on the other side. I focus on him - his good looks, his grin, the way all the other girls look at him, some openly and some with a secret attraction they would never act on since he is a demon. That is what gets me through each second.
Finally, he gets to me, his arm wrapping around my waste in a show of what we are. We gets some glares, some shocked stares, but none of that makes me feel anything. I tune it all out as he kisses me on the cheek and then whispers, "How are you holding up?"
I lean into him a little, so he knows without me saying that I am having a hard time, but I'll get through it.
He nods and then slides his hand down to take mine, which takes me by surprise considering he mentioned just days ago he was not the hand holding type, and then he leads me into the classroom right before I would be late.
Dru takes me to my desk, and I can feel Kagan’s eyes on me though I refuse to look. If I do, I might lose it.
I sit down, and Dru makes a scene of climbing onto the top of my desk, lounging on it before leaning down and giving me one of those kisses of his that makes me feel like I've just been injected with three cups of coffee right into my veins.
Pulling away, he winks. "I would love to stay here, but I have class too. I'll see you at lunch, babe."
I try not to laugh as he lays it on thick, and I watch him walk away, following him with my eyes until he disappears down the hall where I can no longer see.
That's when I finally turn to meet Kagan's gaze. His eyes are wide, and I feel smug as class begins, knowing that he is bothered by this. It means he is jealous; he is still affected and feels something. Maybe he realizes what he’s been missing out on now, though I am missing out too.
Dru picks me up from class when it's time for lunch and walks with me. People whisper and murmur about us until we get to our seat with Jake.
I don’t know what strings he's pulled to make sure we have lunch together, but this is more exciting and more time with him than I expected. I didn’t know he would take it so far.
"This is interesting," Jake comments, not holding back at all.
"That’s one way to put it," Dru says before moaning and indulging in some pizza - far too much to be good. Not that any of us are affected by things like grease and fat anymore.
"I didn’t know demons ate anything," I say, watching him pack away three slices in no time. If I wasn’t still emotionally affected by yesterday, it would be comical.
Dru scoots into me, his hot breath on my neck, giving me goosebumps. Despite the pizza, his breath smells like it always does. "What’s the point of being a demon if you don't get to indulge in all the sins of the flesh."
A chill rolls through me, a strong aching in a place that should not be feeling anything during the school day. I suspect he knows just what I am thinking because I catch him smiling at me, one of his hands snaking up my back ever so gently. My nerves are seemingly on fire.
Now, as I try to maintain a conversation with Jake, I have to focus on every word I say while my mind drifts to the way Dru might handle my body once we have sex for the first time. I daresay nothing about it will be slow, gentle, or vanilla.
For the next week, the routine continues, and it becomes more commonplace for Dru and I to hold hands in the hall or make out in corners, pretending as if we have privacy when we know all eyes are on us no matter where we go.
Ignor
ing Kagan has become a routine, and as a teacher, he has become strict, emotionless, and I can’t help but think we have something to do with that. And yet, there has been no contact from him to say he is sorry or ask if we can meet up and work it out. I don't know why my heart clings onto hope when my brain knows better.
The most refreshing thing about all this, though, is how I am getting to know Dru. I know what he is like on the inside. All his charm and attitude are real, completely him, unlike Kagan's front of being a jokester and a jerk. Dru has all the typical qualities that being a demon would give someone other than lack of mercy.
Mercy and love are things he has in abundance, but you have to peel back the layers to get to it.
The days until my birthday fly by, and then Halloween is upon us.
I have my sliding glass door open so I can see and hear the torrential rains that pour outside. It is a cold rain, one that will give way to sleet and even snow in a month or less. The white of the peaks is returning, though I can’t see it at all right now. It is raining hard enough I can’t see anything, and that’s why I am watching it. It’s cloaking the truth, that no one is coming to see me.
I gave Dru the night off as my fake solo boyfriend, hoping against hope that Kagan will show up like he wanted. It is my birthday, and if we can’t call a truce for the sake of making it a good day now, then I don’t think we will ever get there.
I hum a tune I remember my mother used to sing, though I say sing loosely.
My mother's voice was lovely. She could have been a singer if she hadn’t been born to be a hunter. But she had a problem remembering lyrics to anything, and so most of the things she sang to me I never learned any more than the tune either.
This one I remember catching her holding her belly and singing to the brother I never got to meet. I close my eyes imagining I am close to her once more. That she is not gone.
I don’t know why it is less painful to think of her than to think of my father. Maybe it has to do with my father dying in battle and my mother only being a symptom of his death.
It was his death that caused all the turmoil in our lives, not hers.
It’s still causing it after all these years.
I really hope Dru can help me get to the bottom of what happened to him. For a while I was afraid to know what had become of him, the truth of it, but now I just want the truth.
I don’t know if I’m giving up or growing up.
I watch the rain and make up shapes in it as I keep humming. I imagine Kagan coming to put it all behind us for one romantic night.
There is still time, though it’s late into the evening. And I see movement, sense it, but it’s only Ursula, making her way home from the shortest run on record.
I laugh at her as she comes in and shakes her wetness all over the place, grumbling reaching my head from her as she is clearly annoyed with the state of things outside. "Not a fan of rain?" I ask her.
She literally growls at me and goes to her pillow, curling up to get warm. I scoff at her and look back into the rain and have to squint, swearing I see the outline of something or someone out there.
Then, as his shape comes into view, getting closer, I realize I am not crazy.
I have company.
No, it can't be. My lonely mind has to have conjured him in its wishful thinking. An angel cannot be standing on my balcony.
And yet, his dripping form comes into my apartment, likely soaking through the floor. But I don't care. It’s the best birthday present I could possibly imagine right now, and I'm not going to waste a single second of it.
"I thought you wouldn’t be able to come see me. That it wasn't safe," I say to him, penetrating the quiet as he reaches behind him to shut the sliding glass door, blocking out the storm, much like his presence does in my life.
"Did you want me to miss your birthday?" he asks, cokcing his head to the side. His blue eyes piercing through my soul as usual, and I don’t know if I want to cry or scream at the top of my lungs like a banshee. There are so many emotions surging all at once.
The need of him is put into stark clarity after being apart for so long and now having him here.
"I just thought you would say that it was too dangerous to risk, even on my birthday."
"I'm sorry. Do you want me to go?"
"Hell no."
Chapter Ten
We stand there, looking at each other as if we are both afraid we are staring at mirages.
All the pain and the worry that I have felt goes away the moment I walk up to him and touch his face, knowing now that he is real. He is here.
"You might want to use some of that glorious magic of yours to dry me off first,” he says, his tone even, almost condescending. It reminds me of his coldness when we first met at school - when I believed it was our first meeting. How he had glared at me from that stage and seemed so cruel in the office. And yet it had just served to make me want to impress him more. Be something more amazing than I was, more amazing than just a Graywood.
All along I already was, and he had been the one to make me that way because he decided I was special.
"I don’t care," I tell him, my whole hand on his cheek now, his suit still dripping on the floor. "You’re always dressed so formally," I comment, looking at the suit he has possible ruined - a stunning deep red that only he could pull off. Only an angel can get away with these modern colors for his designer dress clothes without looking like a joke.
"What else should I wear to celebrate the birth of the most amazing woman I’ve ever met?" There is nothing ironic or dumb about the way he says it, and I still can’t believe he is mine. All mine. And not once has he protested about the fact that I am with Dru and Kagan. There has been a silent acceptance, even having pursued me when I was already with one of them.
"I think archangels find it easy to meet those that amaze them," I say cheekily.
"I don’t know. Of all the angels I have known and seen in my time, you're the brightest one."
"You have to stop saying things like that and giving me a big ego."
He smiles, and his brilliantly white teeth make me want to run my finger along them and feel if they are as straight as they look too. It is not lost on me right now, though that we are alone in my apartment again.
The first time we were, something almost happened.
I wanted it to, but he held me back, told me that my first time would have to be with someone else because he felt he had already taken too many things from me.
I still don’t understand it considering it would have been giving me a wonderful memory, but who is to say we still can’t make one?
I don’t blush at the thought this time. My grown up part demon self is not embarrassed by these feelings for the men she loves anymore.
But his head is somewhere else as he looks up and scans the mostly dark space as if just remembering where he is. "I just came to make sure I said happy birthday. I couldn’t stay away even though I told Kagan this could be his day with you. I know you haven’t seen much of him either."
"Kagan’s not here. It’s just us."
"Oh." The word is neutral, no intonation at all, and yet it holds so much meaning.
"Is that a good oh?"
"I don’t know, is it?"
I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about Kagan. It doesn’t matter either way. I can’t possibly explain to you how much it means that you're here. I know it puts me in danger, but I was going to be alone on my birthday. It may make me sound childish, but I just feel so alone right now."
Don't cry I tell myself over and over in my head. He’s not going to want to have sex with someone who has just cried blood all over the place.
But as the tears come and he reaches out to catch them on his finger, I remember he cries just the same. There is nothing I have to hide here, and it feels more right than it’s ever been, which is saying something.
I finally feel like his equal.
"I've missed you more than I can explain in mortal
terms," he says, his own tears leaving his eyes. "I love you, and it’s hard to stay away. I crave you each day and each night, and I worry that something will happen to you when I am not here. Good or bad, and I will miss it."
I reach up and cling to his ringlets of gorgeous hair, like silk across my skin. "There's nothing you have to explain because I feel the same," I whisper. I stare at his lips, willing them to come and brush against mine. I know with him things will be just the right speed. If we go there, it won’t be too slow, but there will be no frenzy. We will dink each other down with love and pleasure that is sanctified by the Heavens above us.
If anything, I am afraid it will overwhelm me, but if it does and I die, what other way would I rather go?
Finally, his lips land on mine. The kisses are some hard some soft and never ending until he lingers just over my lips, catching his breath to say, "You're shaking."
"Only because I want you so badly," I admit to him.
His blue eyes widen, but he does not move away from me or let go. I give him credit for that because I would break if he did.
"Riley, I..."
"Please, don’t tell me you have another excuse. I am not a virgin anymore, and even if I was, I would still want this. You're not taking anything from me unless you say no. But if you don’t want me... I don’t know how angels feel."
He rumbles with anger, shaking me like a frustrating child. "There is nothing I want more. Angels, we can do the carnal things humans do, and we can choose to take a mortal or immortal partner, but we do not function the same as mortals, moving on from one to the next, ever changing. If we allow ourselves to be taken by only desire we can have meaningless encounters that strip away our angelic nature, but to do something like this with someone we love, seals that love forever on both planes. We cannot take it back, even if the mortal chooses to. Or even if they die."
Demon Witch (Paranormal Hunter Academy Book 3) Page 7