Page 74 of Soul Food

“We’ll write out a contract.” Master had an obsession with contracts. He liked his words, and he liked the words of others. He liked holding them to it and hurting them if they didn’t comply. He knew most weren’t as good at discipline as he was with himself.

Master reeled him in. He took the bait.

We left there to finish up the loose end that the old man was. Master let me kill him but scolded me when he caught me humping his dead carcass. In my head, I understood why Master found it sick and twisted, but when he wasn’t looking I indulged. After all, I was still a gremlin. Master knew that.

Fast forward ten years, and here we were at the end of this long hunt for Ruth’s soul. Only I knew this was a bad idea. I saw it then, and I saw it now as Master watched her cry. Her soul wilted and from the very beginning, we knew there was no helping her soul when she knew she was going to die.

But like many times over, we’d stuck around Ruth. We’d witnessed and been there for every high and low of her singing career. And when her soul was happy, Master’s was happy. When hers was wilting, his was too.

There were hundreds of demons in the Underworld. Gremlins and soul reapers only being two of them, but the day I decided I wanted to follow Amit and make him my master, I sought out information of his kind and stumbled upon something rather interesting in the process. I never thought it could be true since Master never fell or swayed toward anything. But he couldn’t see what he’d been doing over the last ten years. He kept us in the human world too long for a soul.

It was said that when soul reapers found their perfect soulmate, it was instant and true. Not only that, it was consuming as well as disastrous because the will of their one true match became their will. And given how driven Master was I believed it to be true. Our lives revolved around nothing but her.

I think Master knew the truth too. He just never wanted to admit a mere human was the one making his soul shake. He was proud and strong. Then there was Ruth. Ten years of staying by her side invisible, some of those years spent inside her dog, I already grew attached to her in the same way I was to Master. It was something I couldn’t say aloud though. Not until he admitted himself.

Until then, I’d respect his wishes.

Master was either going to eat her soul or…

Honestly, I hoped she consumed him instead. If anyone deserved Master’s love, it was the human and her exceptional belly rubs.

“Come on, Lars,” Master’s voice rumbled from his reaping form.

“You don’t want me to stay here and watch her tonight?” He always wanted to watch after her.

“I can’t… I don’t know how to make her happy.”

Master was the foolish one now, but he was also right. I couldn’t see a happy ending. There was no way she’d accept him after everything he’d done as a demon determined to eat her soul.

It didn’t stop me from saying, “Sire, why don’t you go ahead and admit the truth to yourself? You never had any intention of eating Ruth’s soul because you fell in love with it that day. As you got to know the owner of the soul, you fell in love with her too.”

Chapter Twenty-One

RUTH

I didn’t even get to finish my mental breakdown before my doorbell started going off again. I glanced over at the door as if it were a disease. If it was Amit again, I didn’t want him to see me like this. I needed to get a grip but needed to know how in order to do so.

I picked myself up off the floor and stood. I wiped my eyes and turned my expression into one of steel—heartless and cold. When I approached the door, it wasn’t Amit at the door though. “Max?” I said surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t Jayne tell you?” He scratched his jaw and gave me a confused grimace. “Not sure exactly, but she mentioned some sort of papers you needed to deal with urgently.”

“Papers?” What papers? I frowned, tears momentarily forgotten.

He held up his hands. “Don’t ask me, I’m just the bodyguard.”

I tried to think of what kind of papers we dealt with lately and knew there weren’t any since I hadn’t done anything but go to the charity event since coming home from the tour. Could it be something from the lawyer? Was there a problem with my will? If that was the case, I had to make sure.

“I’ll call and see.” I pulled out my phone to call her, and he grabbed my hands.

“She said for me to take you to her.” I studied Max’s grip on me. Something wasn’t adding up. Jayne would call me. She’d never give information out to one of the bodyguards, even Rupert who we both adored. I gave Max a quick glance head to toe.

“Why would she call you?” I asked as I shut the door slightly so that he took the hint that I was onto him. Bodyguards were bodyguards. She wouldn’t get him, a new one at that, to come to me like this.

He dropped his head and sighed. “Ruth, I was hoping you would make this easy for me.”

“What are you talking about?” Just as I asked though, I got my answer. He pushed the door open and grabbed me. My knee connected to his crotch, causing him to grunt painfully.

“Fuck, that hurt!” He hissed as he tried to get a better grip on me.

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