Occasionally, in moments like this, she would catch a glimpse of the darkness behind his eyes, and she knew whatever he was hiding went deep.
Whatever it was had something to do with his demon form, but beyond that, she didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t like he was ashamed of his demonic existence. He and his brothers flaunted their supernatural abilities, joking about their superiority to humankind, finding it hilarious when they inevitably failed at blending in. From what Iris had seen, they weren’t remorseful. They didn’t care what anyone thought.
But Meph... She’d tried asking him a few more personal questions since she’d learned about his binding seal tattoo, but he was masterful at changing the subject and dodging unpleasant inquiries.
He was a puzzle. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought him shallow, because she was coming to realize he might have been the most complex person she’d ever met. He was a mystery, and against her better judgment, she wanted to solve him.
“I think some people make their problems worse than they need to,” Iris mused. “They secretly crave pain—because they feel inadequate or undeserving of happiness, I dunno—so they aggrandize their issues in their minds. They trick themselves into believing things are worse than they are until they actually do get worse. Or they refuse to do what’s necessary to fix their problems and claim it’s impossible. They make their lives harder than they have to be. They get in their own way. They’re their own worst enemy.”
The minute the words were out, she cringed. She hadn’t meant to describe herself, yet she suddenly knew that was exactly what she’d done. She’d just summarized her entire fucking personality. How embarrassing to be such a textbook example of an idiot.
“That sounds like an exhausting way to live,” Meph said.
You have no idea.Or maybe he did.
She glanced at him.If he’s smiling, so help me—
Hewassmiling, the dork. And she was powerless to resist. Her cynical, bitter, self-sabotaging brain ceased all higher functioning.
His cheeks crinkled in perfect creases, slightly distorting the Sheolic script tattooed down the left side of his face. His red eyes seemed to glow under the dim bulb of her outdoor light. A lock of black hair fell across his forehead and over his eye, and she desperately wanted to reach over and brush it out of the way.
So she did.
The joint was finished, so she stabbed it out on the ashtray between them. Then she stretched a hand out and pushed the hair out of his face. It was silky between her fingers.
Their gazes met. His smile faded away, but not because the moment was tarnished. The opposite. It turned... intimate. Heated, because things always turned heated between them the second either of them initiated anything. A single touch. A long look. Even a bloody compliment. Their chemistry was off the charts.
If she’d thought their little friends-with-benefits arrangement would get him out of her system, she’d been wrong. Very wrong. The more time she spent with him, the more she wanted him. The more she couldn’t stop staring at him, touching him, making him laugh, making him come.
He was an addiction just like the fucking cigarettes. Another vice to add to the list.
God, he was so pretty, though. She’d never seen a smile like his before. It pissed her off—what did he have to be so damned happy about all the time?—but she couldn’t get enough of it. She was glad he smiled so much, because she had a sinking feeling she would do stupid things to make that little grin appear. Luckily, it appeared all on its own with little prompting.
She retracted her hand.
Their gazes continued to hold, and the air felt charged. The corner of his mouth quirked, and she wondered what he was thinking.
She stared into his demonic red eyes and wished she could crack open his head and peer inside. He played his role well—insouciant, lacking perception and maybe a little intelligence—but she had learned he was plenty sharp. She’d figured out he had a healthy dose of cunning and ruthlessness hidden under all those layers, and she desperately wanted to see it.
It came out sometimes when they had sex, and it felt like he was punishing her for something. Sometimes she wanted to be punished. She had discovered that with him, her boundaries extended far beyond what she’d ever thought possible. Sometimes it felt like he wanted to fuck her into submission, until she was cowering and begging at his feet.
And... she wanted to cower and beg. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She wasn’t sure she was ready to give up that much control, yet it kept happening whether she was ready for it or not.
But right now, the look in his eyes wasn’t heated or dark. It was something else. It looked like he was trying to crack her head open too. It brought her some measure of comfort to know she was as much a mystery to him as he was to her.
“Iris...” His voice was quiet. Soft? He usually only used her name when he was serious. So, rarely. Otherwise he chose from an extensive list of increasingly ridiculous pet names that she pretended to hate.
“What?” Her voice came out a whisper. She was holding her breath, though she had no idea why. Like she was waiting for something, something sheneededto hear.
Something that terrified her. Something she wasn’t ready for.
“I—”
And then he blinked. Thesomethingwas gone without a trace, and they both slumped back into their chairs as though relieved.
He flashed that ridiculous, gorgeous, infuriating grin. “I wanna go inside and fuck on your couch.”
She blinked too, taken aback by the sudden return to normalcy. “Why the couch?”
