She shrugged. “I told her how we met and what I saw at the nightclub, and how we connected through music. And I told her how I thought we had something special, but then I learned who you were and how this was only about sex for you, and yeah.”
“Oh.” He looked away at the admittedly terrible view.
They were facing another equally ugly, gray apartment building with water stains on the brick under all the window sills. On the balcony opposite them, a man wearing a stained undershirt was scratching his armpit.
Eva frowned at Ash. He looked dejected, sad even, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t trust any of her assumptions about him since learning what he was. “You’re the one who said that, Ash.”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t sound all that sure of himself.
What was she doing, talking about this with him? She didn’t want to date a demon, right?
He could shapeshift into a creature from nightmares... but he was still Ash. Try as she might to forget everything she’d learned about him while they were getting to know each other, she couldn’t. She’d been blown away by how compatible they were, how many similar interests they share, and how easy it was to talk to him.
It was somehow easier to keep pretending the red-skinned monster was a figment of her imagination than to forget all that.
In her head, she kept hearing his laugh when they talked for hours on the phone, seeing his eyes light up when they played music, and worse, remembering the way he moaned when he came inside her. Or how he looked naked. Or how amazing it felt when they’d had sex on top of her piano. Or how—
Okay. So she was still wildly attracted to him. Demon or not, he was still the hottest man, creature, person,thingshe had ever seen.
So where did that leave her? Was she deranged? Deeply disturbed? Shouldn’t knowing what he was kill any desire she felt for him?
“I’m having these... feelings,” Ash said suddenly, and she glanced at him in surprise.
He looked about as relaxed as a man sitting on a cactus. His muscles vibrated with restless tension, and a grimace twisted his features. All the while, Miles kept up his soulful trumpeting from the headphones.
“Um, what feelings?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and dragged hard on his cigarette. “I don’t know feelings.”
“Right.” God, he was weird. Guess she knew why now, though.
His eyes narrowed. “Like, when you were scared, I kinda felt like puking. And I had this urge to make sure you weren’t scared anymore.”
“Oh.” Okay, gross. But also kind of sweet.
“And when you told me you couldn’t leave your life here, I had this kind of achy feeling.” He rubbed his chest. “It hurt. Which is strange because I can’t feel pain.” He frowned. “I didn’t like it. And I also felt guilt. That feeling I know.”
Damn, her heart hurt now too. It was sad and a little sweet, but mostly just sad. Poor Ash had no idea how to identify his own emotions. It made her want to cry for him. It made her want to hug him.
She remembered his theory about demons evolving. Was it possible he had evolved to the point where he was genuinely experiencing human emotions, and he couldn’t understand them because he had no past experience with them?
If that was true, it brought up a thousand more questions. In her understanding of demons—which, granted, was very little—they were supposedly the antithesis of positive emotions, the pinnacle of those being love.
But if Ash was having these humanlike emotions, did that mean he was capable of experiencing love? He might have no clue what it was if he felt it, but it might be there all the same. It would explain so much about him. His relationship with his brothers, his passion for music...
Was it possible he could learn to loveher? Did she want him to?
Ash puffed hard on his cigarette. He was inhaling that toxic, formaldehyde-laced poison like it was the air he needed to breathe.
“I feel... attached to you. Like I am to my brothers, but different. More.” He scowled, keeping his gaze locked straight ahead. “It’s uncomfortable, and my chest aches all the time, and I fucking hate it.”
She couldn’t help it. She smiled. It was the sweetest, most incompetent way she’d ever had someone tell her they cared.
“Ash...” What was she going to tell him?
“We should go,” he grumbled, taking another drag of his cigarette. The thing had burned into a pencil-shaped point, he was smoking it so hard.
She couldn’t help it. She reached forward and ripped it out of his hand and crushed it in the ashtray.
