Lily dropped the bloody cloth and raced to help, only to freeze with her hands out as if reluctant to touch him. While he was sure the blood was part of it, it was obvious she was repulsed by his demon form.
He had seen the look on her face when he shifted. It was not one he would soon forget.
“I am fine.” It came out as a growl, and he swiped his claws for her to stay back.
Using the wall for balance, he maneuvered down the hall, his wings dragging on the floor, leaving bloody handprints on the walls and a trail in his wake.
To his surprise, Lily slipped past him and rushed ahead into the bathroom, and he heard the water turn on before he made it to the door. Once inside the cramped space, he found her bent at the waist, testing the temperature from the tap before pulling the lever to activate the shower. He couldn’t stop his growl at the sight of her on display for him.Want to chase. Want to bite.
She jumped up and spun around, her cheeks’ flush deepening, reminding him that she was not actually offering herself in that way. At least not when he looked like a demon.
She wrung her hands. “I made it warm but not too hot. I figured hot might hurt your wounds, but nobody likes a cold shower, so I thought somewhere in between would be better. Is that okay?”
The temperature mattered little. One did not serve Paimon for millennia without developing a high tolerance for discomfort. He stepped further into the bathroom, and Lily flattened herself to the wall to avoid him.
Part of him wanted to shift to human form because he missed the way she responded to him, and he wanted to experience it again. But another part, the darker, wounded part, wanted to force her to see this form. If she didn’t like him as he was, why should he change for her?
He stepped into the tub wearing his pants because they were as filthy as the rest of him. Wyrm leather cleaned easily and would dry in seconds, faster even than skin.
He’d never been inside a small human shower before as Belial had specifically outfitted the one in their apartment for a being of his size. The ceiling was too low for a creature with wings, and he was forced to wrap them awkwardly around himself to fit in the narrow stall. Worse, the shower nozzle was below his head height, and even when he ducked, he couldn’t fit beneath it.
Lily stared at him, muttering, “A demon is in my shower. A very large, very bloody demon. Is in my shower. That’s fine. Demons take showers. Of course they do. This is perfectly normal.”
Mist gripped the curtain bar to aid his balance as he tried again to duck beneath the spray. Unfortunately, the moment he put the slightest amount of weight on it, it ripped from the wall in a cloud of dust and tile chunks. Without the plastic barrier, water sprayed everywhere.
Growling, he dropped the bar and curtain. He reached up to the nozzle, intent on tearing it from the wall to change the position of the spray.
Just as his claws fixed around the attachment, Lily suddenly leapt into action.
“Let me help!” She reached out and grabbed his arm. “I’ll do it. I’ll hold it for you.”
He looked down at her. “You can’t reach.”
“Just… sit in the tub. And I’ll stand here and wash you.”
She would? He almost didn’t believe it, but he was curious enough to try. Dutifully, he sank into a crouch, angling his wings overhead so they wouldn’t crumple beneath him. Then he looked up at her expectantly. He didn’t have to look up very far. Crouching brought him nearly to her eye level.
She swallowed. “Okay. Time to wash the demon in my shower. Totally normal. Let’s do this.”
She rose on her tiptoes, slipped the nozzle out of the slot it rested in, and then aimed it in his direction.
* * *
Lily was washing a demon.Had she said that aloud enough times already? It didn’t seem to help it sink in.
She watched him sort through her body wash collection on the side of the tub, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed each bottle until he finally found the unscented one. He squirted half the contents into his large palm and then got busy washing himself.
First, she angled to spray over his thick hair and winced as he scrubbed it vigorously with those wickedly sharp claws. His poor hair. It was so tangled, he hadn’t a hope of getting his fingers through it, and he didn’t try. Then, he moved straight to his body, running his big hands over the planes of muscle stretched under that dark gray skin.
The water ran red as it rinsed down the drain, and the chunks of awful flesh that had been stuck to him went with it.
That should have been the detail she fixated on. Not his strong hands sliding over his wet skin. Not the way the strength in his arms and back shifted as he moved, the tight muscle rippling with each motion.
He wasgray. He was also a demon. This was not a normal man in her tub. Nothing about the situation was normal, despite what she kept muttering to herself.
She was further reminded of that when he flexed his wings, opening them up at his sides and angling them under the spray. She helped by moving the showerhead so the gore would rinse off while he continued using those big hands to rub them clean.
He struggled to reach the back side of his wings, and before she knew what she was doing, she was reaching forward and taking over the task. Showerhead in one hand, she used the other to sweep down the back of one leathery expanse.
