Page 8 of The Dame & the Devil

“I want to punish sinners who have slipped through the cracks in your rules.”

He looks at me over his shoulder, a question in the pinch of his brows. “Are you sure you’re not a sinner?”

“Not by your rules.”

By God’s rules, yes. But she doesn’t punish the living sinners. She doesn’t give a shit about the living.

Every waking breath in the world above makes me want to break those rules—and bones at the same time.

“Knowing not to break your rules has nothing to do with my wicked heart.”

He turns to me, claws scraping on stone and his tail lashes out, wrapping around my neck, squeezing as he drags me to him.

“You think your heart is wicked?”

His tail tightens and I can’t speak as a flutter of desire washes through me.

The pressure feels like a string tied directly to my clit and I close my eyes, fighting against it.

Now is not the time.

They fly wide when five points of pain erupt across my chest.

Fire burns through me as he presses his whole hand into my body and plucks my heart from me.

When he pulls away from me, all of my warmth goes with him… and the beating red organ in his hand.

He stares at it, his scowl deepening as he twists it this way and that.

I gasp when he releases me a moment later, and I drop to the floor with a sickening crack of my knees. My hand goes to my chest, but the skin there is only marred by five points of blood where his claws punctured me.

A pair of enormous scales appear in a swirl of smoke and he turns to them, still glaring at the beating lump in his hand.

I draw shallow breaths, shivering as the cold slithering over my skin soaks deeper and deeper.

One of the dishes burns with a dark grey flame and he sets my heart in the other.

With his back to me, I watch the feathers of his wings shiver and twitch as though agitated by what he sees.

The scales don’t tip.

Whatever he has weighed my heart against, it is equal, not lacking or overburdened.

“It appears that you are not a saint…” He glares at the level beam. “But neither are you a sinner.”

Scooping my heart from the dish, he turns back to me. “I suppose we’ll just have to see what you actually are, won’t we?”

Idle Hands & Devil’s Playthings

His hands are all warmth when he draws me from the floor and presses my heart back through my chest, shoving it into place. And I fall against him, trying to soak up every bit of that warmth I can get.

It fills me, blossoming through my chest and clawing its way outward to my skin.

“What would you give me to hear your changes?”

“What else do I have to bargain with besides myself?”

“Is that what you offer me? Body and soul?”

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