Page 68 of Bad Demon

She frowned. “What happened?”

I shrugged. “No one’s ever really told me much about her except that she was a demon. I was the first hound born naturally, well, not created by Lucifer directly, anyway. The first and only born without my parents being mated. His handmaids looked after me when I was a pup, and when I was old enough to train, I joined my brothers.”

“So, you’re half demon.”

“That’s not really how it works with hounds. Male offspring are always hounds; female pups always take after their mothers.”

She studied me. “So, Warrick’s daughter is a witch? She won’t be able to shift into a hound?”

“That’s right.”

And only the males of our young were granted immortality—unless our mates were already immortal, of course. If not? We were forced to watch our females age and die. It was fucked up, and Warrick had been in talks with Lucifer about it. Since Lucifer had granted Willow and any pups they have immortality, War wanted that for the rest of us, but Lucifer was resistant for some fucked-up reason.

“That’s kind of crazy.” Her finger did the tracing-my-ink thing again. “What about Lothar? Is he a good dad?”

“Loth and I, we’ve never had that kind of relationship. He’s a brother to me, like the rest.” Though, for some reason, talking about it now caused a weird feeling in my chest, one I’d never had before.

“Do you love him?” she asked.

“Until a hound mates, we’re only capable of feeling loyalty, anger, and lust. We experience pleasure, but love isn’t something we’re capable of feeling or returning. So, no, but I would die for him, and he, for me.”

Her finger drifted down to trace the hound that stood above the words Devil Dogs MC inked on my chest. “Sounds like love to me,” she said softly.

“I wouldn’t know.” And without thinking, I did the same, except instead of ink, I traced over a scar on her forearm. “How did you get this?”

Her entire body stilled, and she pulled her arm away, shoving it under the covers. “I don’t remember.”

Again, she was obviously lying. My female was covered in scars—so fucking many—and every time I saw them, thought about them, I wanted to tear someone to shreds, to snuff out their worthless life, except there was no enemy to turn my rage on. There was no one to kill. Someone had hurt her though—the marks on her skin were definitely not from some accident. The one beside the scar I’d just pointed out looked like a fucking burn. Those scars shouldn’t even be possible.

“I think I’ll go to sleep now,” she said.

She rolled away, effectively shutting any more questions down, and something thumped on the floor. The vibrator.

Fern stilled, staring down at it, and then she turned to me, cheeks dark pink. “Where did you get that from?” Her eyes filled with alarm. “Have you used that thing on other females?”

“No—”

“Then where did you get it?” she demanded.

“I messaged Rome and got him to pick it up while I waited outside the room last night.”

The blood drained from her face. “You got one of your brothers to get it? You told him about me, about what I did, you—”

“No, Fern, I’d never fucking do that. I won’t ever talk about you that way. Nothing we do, that you do, will ever leave this room—you hear me?”

She was shaking her head. “You must’ve told him something. He went sex-toy shopping for you … for me, for fuck’s sake.”

She was moving away from me, and I grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back before she jumped out of bed and tried to run away.

“What you need to understand, Fern, is the kind of males we are, the way our emotions are, we do not fucking judge. That’s a human emotion. I told you we crave touch, that we need it and the pleasure it gives us, but you’ve also seen how big I am. Yes, hounds like to fuck, but not all females, especially human, can fuck with a male our size. So, we get them off in other ways. We use our fingers, our mouths, and sometimes, we use toys. Rome does not give a fuck we used a vibrator; he’s used them with females. He owed me a favor, and I called it in, so I didn’t have to leave you. Now, the next time you need to get off, you won’t fucking hurt yourself. That was what I was thinking, and Rome didn’t think any-fucking-thing at all.”

She was quiet for several seconds, her mind ticking. She’d at least stopped trying to pull away from me. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“If you’re using your fingers and mouth or whatever to get them off, what do you get?” she asked, surprising me.

I couldn’t be honest about what we were to each other, but everything else that came out of my mouth was going to be the truth. “Sometimes, all we want is to feel another being close, so we’re not always looking for sex. But if a female is into it, and we’re too big for her to fuck, she can use her hands or her mouth on us as well.”

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