Page 15 of Soul Food

The books were something I had a witch make for me years ago. My species of demon was on the verge of extinction. Grim and his Reapers were the cause as well as ourselves. I didn’t need a book to take a soul. I could eat any soul I wanted, and that was the problem. Eating without a care came with a price though. If you got too carried away and killed more than you were supposed to, it placed you in deep shit with the Reapers who were in charge of keeping the balance between life and death; good and bad, blah, blah, blah.

Our nature, something we couldn’t change, was the very thing getting us killed.

It’s why I came up with the books. A spell—a contract within a book was placed upon the person against their will—giving me rights to their soul the moment they touched it. Was it devious and wrong? Yes, it was. Could the Reapers do anything about it? No. A contract was a contract no matter how crooked. They were junkies for rules, and mine was one that guaranteed me protection from them.

I wasn’t about to be hunted and killed like most of my kind. I happened to be smarter. And I happened to like to live and wanted to for a long time to come.

And apparently, Lars did as well with the way he zigzagged and jumped and wobbled through the traffic. He might have been invisible, but that didn’t make him invincible.

I applauded his loyalty and told myself that was why I let such a nasty demon close by my side.

He was panting by the time he reached the sidewalk and handed me the book. “To Ruth’s now?” he panted. My habits were his habits. He knew exactly where I planned to go.

I glanced at the chaos going on in the middle of the four-lane road one more time, catching sight of the man’s mangled body before I departed with Lars.

_____

“Oh, my God!” Jayne gasped as she plopped down next to Ruth on the tan sofa. Ruth’s legs were tucked underneath her as she watched the TV with silent interest. “I swear people are just not careful anymore. How much you want to bet the driver was texting? I mean, no other drivers continued on when they saw the man keel over.”

Ruth didn’t say anything, instead her arm roamed over into her tub of Red Bird Peppermint Puffs sitting on the side table beside her. She tore into the wrapper and popped one into her mouth. I only knew the name of those because Ruth ate them like they were going out of style. I couldn’t remember a time when the human didn’t have a bucket of them with her.

I moved closer, letting my gaze run over her out of habit. Humans could only see my reaping form if I allowed them to, which was why neither of them were freaking out right now. Ruth was carrying one of the brightest, most yearning souls I’d ever come across, but her body was the complete opposite of bright. She was darker than a night sky, every bit as black as my reaping form. Her legs were tone and bare, her white shorts only covering the most private part of a human. She was curvy, yet stronger than her body looked. I knew how much she worked out in the gym, but it didn’t take away from the softness that I’d never touched but knew was there. The whites of her eyes stood out in contrast to her skin color, which made her the most fascinating human I’d ever seen. The most beautiful woman worthy of the soul she carried.

When soul reapers mated, we used our human forms. It didn’t mean we liked our human forms, we just had no solid form in reaping form. We were, more or less, souls who ate souls. We could dance and mesh with one another, but it wasn’t what we needed to breed. We needed a human form for that.

Even so, most of us—including me, loathed our human form. It felt like it went against our nature to have to be something else in order to carry on our species. Yet we did it.

I’d never bonded with another soul, but I’d carried out the act many times before. After all, we were a species that lived on emotions like desire and lust. We just didn’t let it overcome us or control us like humans did. We were far more reserved. Well, most of us anyway. You couldn’t count the ones who were getting themselves killed.

As much as I disliked a human form and its shape, mine was useful and we all needed a release. My fascination with Ruth’s body had to be the very fact that I craved her soul to the point of madness, and in the process, I developed an unwanted response to her body.

Her soul was unlike any I’d ever craved before. I sought and thrived off the wicked—greed and exploitation—just absolute filthy humans. The aroma from them was ten times sweeter than that of someone good. Bad was delicious for a soul reaper.

But Ruth… Her soul was bright and full of yearning—passionate and beautiful—all the things I’d never gone after before, and yet, there was still something different about hers that placed it apart from all others. Something mouth-watering, heart-stopping, andimpossibleto ignore. The moment I caught whiff of her ten years ago, it was all over. Cherry blossoms in bloom. That was the closest thing I could get to her scent, but even then, I could only think,she smelled better.There was nothing more hypnotic to me than her soul.

She wiggled her bright green-painted toenails as she shifted on the sofa. Her legs splayed a second—but that was all it took for me to see the tight press of her shorts outlining her pussy before she closed them and got comfortable again. My shadowy form quivered.

Maybe there were other enthralling things about Ruth Thomas besides her soul—the very reason the human was driving me to the brink of my undoing.

Still in my reaping form, I turned toward the TV to see that myfoodincident made the news today. Lars stood next to me, and it didn’t take a minute being there before the dog spotted us and started growling which had Lars laughing and teasing him.

“What’s he growling at?” Jayne whispered as she scooted closer to Ruth’s side of the sofa.

“Probably nothing,” Ruth responded tiredly as she rubbed her eyes and rested her head on the arm of the sofa. “He barks at his own shadows.”

“Seriously, he scares me all the time.” Jayne visibly shook as she latched onto Ruth, causing her to grin. “You should let me hire someone to stay around the mansion when you’re home.”

“No. This is my time for privacy.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Come here, Moose,” Ruth called to her dog as she patted her leg.

Lars ran and jumped inside the dog. Then he ran to Ruth and flipped onto his back, waiting for Ruth. She wasted no time hooking a leg around him as she rubbed underneath his chin. “Look at that face.” Jayne laughed, then petted him too.

I’d imagined the damned gremlinreallyloathed watching over Ruth, even as going as far as putting in extra hours away with her. I guess that was in the past now. Years ago, he would get so angry that I was forcing him to stay with her instead of by my side. Now he leaped at the chance with no hesitation.

Eventually, I was going to murder him since he was determined to test my patience every day.

---