Page 84 of Soul Food

“About how disgusted I am that I laid with a demon.” I glowered up at him.

“Are you really?” He caught me off-guard with that one. “To ease your mind, know that this is my real form. I have a soul reaper form and a human one.” It did make me feel better, at least a little. It was nice to know that I didn’t sleep with someone that truthfully looked like his gremlin companion, Lars. “And be honest, you are full of lust when it comes to my outer appearance.”

I felt my entire body tightening. That was when I walked away. I was full of anger, and he was right. And I didn’t want to throw a tantrum in the middle of a park. Although, kicking and screaming at the demon sounded so very tempting.

I hated being betrayed.

His presence covered my entire back before he sidestepped and joined me by my side. “I avoided you for years, and you shattered that the moment you came onto me.” I took a deep, visible breath and kept walking in hopes that he’d stop talking. “No man or demon could have gone up against you and not succumbed to what you did to me.”

I didn’t want to remember that I was the one seducing him, but his words… I couldn’t bear them.

I stopped and turned. “Yeah, I came onto you because I thought you were a man. You knew who I was—you’ve been stalking me the last decade! I’m your damn food, right? Why would you cross that line?”

“Your soul… It’s wilting.” I froze as he brought his hand up, but instead of reaching out to me, he tapped his own chest. “I only want to make it happy. That’s the only thing I’ve been trying to do for the last decade.”

“That’s not true, is it?” I was disappointed in myself that I continued to let myself be hurt. “You can’t have my soul going bad before you devour it, can you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I said otherwise.” He shook his head before his eyes hardened. “Everything I thought I was you destroyed just by existing.”

He stepped in my space, and I swallowed but held my place. He couldn’t do anything right here in public, could he? He gripped my wrist, and I jumped, afraid.

“I should devour your soul right here and now. Get it over with. Let my life go back to normal.”

“Do it,” I goaded him while inside my chest, my heart hammered. But there was something else that flickered in my chest. Longing. A strange, terrible feeling that haunted me. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I was never going to be honest with that feeling deep inside me. My heart was trying to make a fool out of me.

“If I do that, I’ll only be killing myself too.”

Wait,what?Breath lost, I peeked up at him. There was true anguish in his eyes. Why was he hurting too?

Stupid, stupid heart. Don’t get confused by his words. “What do you mean?”

“It means that the only thing I want to devour isyou, not your soul.”

The fear and the confusion only enhanced the heat that slithered up my body. What was this demon trying to do? Play me for a fool? Like I’d fall for his words. I wasn’t even sure what he meant.

Looking down, I jerked my wrist out of his grip. “Don’t.”

Head still drooped, my eyes widened when I saw his hand move, hesitating at my own hand, reaching for my fingers as if he wanted to grab them, but never quite getting there. He sighed, letting his hand fall, and that was when I lifted my head. “I want to touch you, but I can wait until you allow me to.” The demon talked like a man.

He wanted to touch me, break me, then devour my soul. I hated how warm my insides were.

“You’re an awful demon, even worse of a man.”

That was how I walked away from the demon.

Chapter Twenty-Five

RUTH

Liam: I’m sorry for what I am. Can you blame us for not saying a word? It’s not the sort of thing you tell people. We’d love to sing with you, Ruth. Honest fact: you’re the reason we came to Black Hearts. You got an amazing set of pipes on you… But more than that, we’re friends.

That was the text I woke up to from Liam the next morning. I wasn’t sure how to respond, or what I supposed to do with the knowledge that they were vampires. They didn’t seem like bad guys, but like I had just come to realize, I had been screwing my would-be killer and had no clue whatsoever. I wasn’t the best judge of character.

Liz…

The demon…

When the next text came in, I was pouring me a cup of coffee. It was from Jayne.

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