Page 106 of How to Entice a Fiend

Tentatively, I get out of the box as I make my way closer to him, terrified to touch him, but I need to know if he’s still alive. Kneeling down, I reach for him and roll him over as his dead eyes stare up at me and I know I’ve killed him. He’s dead because of me.

I jerk back, scrambling for that darkness that I can hide inside, but no matter where I look, his dead eyes are staring back at me.

“Ender, hey, it’s okay. I’m right here,” Mads whispers in the night.

The darkness is shattered as I feel a gentle hand running down my arm.

“You okay?”

I can’t find it in myself to reply, so I just feign sleep. Even so, for a long time, he runs his fingers down my arm, lulling me back into the darkness, but this time that box doesn’t wait for me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

MADS

Ender is quite restless when he sleeps but it seems like after I woke him, his sleep evened out. He tried to pretend he never fully woke up, though I could tell it took him a while to drift back off.

After that, we both manage to sleep soundly until the door opens around six and Rylee creeps in. She scrutinizes us for a long moment, likely wondering why Ender is in my bed before deciding fuck it and climbing in. She tramples Ender’s body before flopping down, half on top of him.

“Rylee, don’t elbow me,” he groans.

“I didn’t!” she says as she then sets her cat on Ender’s head. Ender looks even less pleased by that, but Rylee is already dead asleep, and he sighs before trying to move the cat so he can go back to sleep himself.

It’s all quite adorable, even if Ender doesn’t seem to think it is… not that I can blame him after the elbowed assault.

When we wake up again, it’s closer to eight. Rylee is still dead to the world, but her cat has wandered off to find food.

“Do you like that hand in your face?” I whisper as Ender wears Rylee’s hand like a face mask.

Ender pushes Rylee’s hand out of his eyeball with a sigh. “I don’t understand why she has to fling her limbs all about when she sleeps. Why can’t her arms and legs just stay close to herself? And why does she flip and flop so much?”

I grin because I found it quite cute.

“You are only grinning because you haven’t been punched in the eyeball,” he says. “Let’s get up. I have shit to murder.”

“You feel up to it?”

“I feel back to normal now,” he assures me.

I slide out and he climbs out on my side so Rylee can keep sleeping. Since his clothes for the day are in his room, he quietly leaves to retrieve them. I grab mine before slipping out so I don’t wake Rylee and because I’d rather get dressed in the same bathroom as Ender. I find him going into the bathroom across the hall from his bedroom, so I slip in after him. Shutting the door behind me, I head over to him as he drops his shirt and sweats. I slide into the perfect place behind him and run my hands over his chest.

“Hmm… dealing with evil guys should be left to others,” I say as I kiss his neck.

“You are partly an evil guy in this,” he reminds me.

“That’s true. But maybe I’m on vacation from being evil?”

“You fit the mad scientist role quite well.”

“Thank you.”

“You live in London, right?”

“I do. But I have no ties to it anymore,” I say. “I left my job. I left my life… after this is all over and I hang up my mad scientist role… I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do.”

“Were you born in England?”

“Denmark, actually. I lived there until I was about seven, then moved to England. My mother got a job there. You?”

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