“That was loud,” Chaos told him, not exactly sounding put off by having scared the bejesus out of Cooper, or by getting an earful for it. He didn’t move any further away either. “And your heart’s beating quite fast.”
Cooper sat up, putting some distance between their faces. Chaos was squatting on his heels by the head of Cooper’s bed, his wings flared behind him, as if to help him keep his balance.
Cooper had almost managed to get weirdly used to the little demon yesterday. It had been hard to maintain his fear and anxiety when Chaos was marching him around the block, swinging their hands together and asking question after question, like an overinquisitive child.
It didn’t make it any less unsettling to have him looming over Cooper while he was sleeping though.
Cooper grabbed his glasses from the bedside table and turned back to Chaos with clear eyes. The demon’s hair was a violently bright purple this morning. It suited him. He also had small, stubby black horns, short enough that Cooper had missed them in the nest of his hair yesterday.
Cooper cleared his throat. Was Chaos still waiting for him to respond? “Yeah, well, my heart beats fast when someone scares the shit out of me first thing in the morning.”
Instead of taking it as a rebuke, Chaos seemed to take it as an invitation, crawling up onto Cooper’s bed and sitting cross-legged on the covers, facing him. He held Cooper’s laptop in his hand.
“Did you like the game?” Cooper asked.
“It was quite tolerable,” Chaos told him. “I have advanced many levels.” He looked almost thoughtful as he said, “It’s a strange sort of chaos to feed off of. Kind of faint in flavor. But also novel.” He gave Cooper’s knee a pat over the covers. “You did well.”
“Great.” Cooper was weirdly proud he’d managed to find something entertaining for the demon to do. He hadn’t even considered Chaos could feed off chaotic energy through a video game.
It had been such a long time since Cooper had had anyone in his space, let alone a strange creature from another realm. He’d half expected Chaos to have run off and found someone better by now.
He can’t, stupid, he reminded himself.He’s bound to you by the contract.
Chaos’s continued presence didn’t have anything to do with Cooper at all, or his talents as a host.
“I found something else,” Chaos said, a sly cant to his voice.
Cooper stuck his fingers under his glasses to rub some of the sleep from his eyes. “Oh yeah?” He could only hope Chaos hadn’t downloaded some horrible virus onto his computer. That would be just his luck.
Chaos opened the laptop, and the sound of moans and wet slapping filled the room before Cooper’s eyes managed to focus on the writhing bodies on the screen.
Sweet, holy fuck.
Chaos had found Cooper’s porn stash.
Cooper’s cheeks heated, and his heartbeat, which had slowed down to a normal rate, ramped up again. “Um…”
That was all he could come up with. A big, fat “Um.”
He cleared his throat. Came up with nothing. Cleared his throat again. “So that’s… Well, pornography is—”
“I know about pornography,” Chaos told him dismissively, even as his eyes gleamed at Cooper’s blush. “Nix liked to watch the shoots through the portal.”
There was so much to process in that statement.
“Nix?” Cooper asked dazedly, his gaze still stuck in horror on the porn Chaos had decided to show him. Hisownporn. “Ivan’s Nix?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“How—how do you know Nix?” Had Nix summoned Chaos first? But Chaos had said he’d been in the Void for centuries before Cooper found him, so that wouldn’t make sense.
“Nix is a demon.” Chaos fast-forwarded the video, pressing play again when the two men on-screen had changed positions. “An incubus. Your boss summoned him, I think.”
Of course. Sure. Ivan had summoned a sex demon. Amalesex demon. That made perfect sense.
What the fuck was Cooper’s life turning into?
“Anyway, you have a splendid variety here,” Chaos told him. “I approve.”
