Page 19 of Wreaking Havoc
“Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?” he asked. “Change into human form?”
Kai took a break from his pornographic coffee moment to shoot him an amused glance. “How else did you think I appeared on the battlefield without causing a panic?”
“I don’t know! Turn invisible or something?”
“Invisibility is a challenge,” Kai mused, casually blowing Sascha’s mind. “Although, I can merge with the shadows well enough. Not like Nightmare, but…” He shrugged a shoulder. A massive, muscled shoulder, all tattooed and lickable and no longer covered by any armor.
Sascha took a huge swallow of his latte, burning his tongue and throat and possibly his entire digestive tract. “Can you turn back?”
Kai arched a dark brow. “Why?”
“Just turn back, please,” Sascha pleaded. “It’s…disconcerting.” Mostly because it looked like a model from the cover of a cheesy romance novel had appeared in Sascha’s kitchen like a wet dream come to life.
Kai let out a heavy sigh, like Sascha was being unreasonable, and set down his coffee. “All right then.”
It turned out it was equally disconcerting to watch him transform from human to demon—it was almost too fast for Sascha’s eyes to follow, the way he grew half a foot in a split second, horns sprouting from his head, Sascha’s kitchen chair suddenly looking like dollhouse furniture beneath him.
Oh God. He was still hot. Why was he still so fucking hot?
Unfairly oblivious to Sascha’s inner turmoil, Kai threw his head back and downed the rest of his coffee, throat working in ways that weren’t helping Sascha’s sexual panic a bit.
Maybe he should have gotten him a gallon of the stuff.
But no. Sascha needed a distraction. He found himself asking a question that had been niggling at the back of his mind. “If you haven’t had a bargain in centuries, why do you speak modern English so well?”
“It’s part of the magic of the Book,” Kai explained. “I speak whatever language needed for my bargain.” He gave Sascha a strange look, then added, “Zaychik.”
The familiar nickname—one given to him as the baby of the family—coming out of the demon’s mouth had Sascha’s brain going haywire. Had he even heard that right? “What was that?” he asked faintly.
“Zaychik,” Kai repeated perfectly, setting his presumably empty cup down with a mournful look.
“There’s no reason for you to speak Russian,” Sascha told him snippily, ignoring the way his traitorous heart was racing. “That’s one of the only words I know. And it’s just a stupid nickname.”
Kai ran his tongue over sharp teeth, looking amused. “I know.Bunny.”
“It can also just mean, like, darling. Or honey or whatever.” Sascha gave him a stern look. All the more reason for the demon to stay away from using it. Sascha was anadult, goddamn it. “You better not start calling me bunny. Pup is bad enough.”
Jesus. This wasn’t the distraction Sascha had been looking for. “There’s pastries too,” he offered, holding up the white paper bag the delivery man / bouncer / online exercise sensation had brought. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I ordered a few different kinds.”
Kai shot the bag a disinterested glance. “I don’t eat human food.”
“What do you live off of, then?”
“In the human realm?” Kai placed a taloned hand on his pec. “The piece of your soul sustains me.”
Sascha brushed that aside immediately. He couldn’t think too hard about a chunk of his soul existing in someone else’s chest. “That’s all you need?”
“All Ineed, yes.” Kai gave him a heated glance, his eyes beginning to glow slightly. “Sometimes our bargains will give us a bit extra for a job well done.”
“More of their soul?” Did people really part with their spiritual bits so willy-nilly? Sascha was no stranger to impulsive decisions—he often made bad calls when scared, or angry, or sometimes just when he was particularly hungry—but damn.
“I can feed off other things,” Kai mused. “Strong emotions, particularly anger or rage. Blood.”
Sascha choked on a sip of his latte. “Demons drink…blood?” He’d been very much hoping that finger biting was a one-off.
Kai leaned back in his chair, seeming to get into the topic. “Different demons specialize in different things. My kind are warriors. So rage, violence, bloodshed.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Once, after a particularly fruitful battle, a chieftain cut open his wrist for me over a goblet. That was a good day.”
What. The. Fuck.
