Page 54 of Virgin Lust

“You sense who I am, don’t you?” He tipped his hood back and revealed a man with dark hair.

“You’re here to kill me,” I said.

“No. Not yet, anyway, but I will if you continue on this path.”

Feeling more confused than ever, I confessed, “I don’t know what I’ve become.”

“A soul reaper,” Grim said.

“A soul reaper?”

“That’s what you are now.”

“Is this what humans become after dying?”

Grim smirked. “You never died, and you were never human. Your true identity has been dormant. Your instinct to survive awakened your true nature and saved your life. You’re a demon.”

“Demon? How? My parents were human.”

“Not both of them. Your mother was a human who slept with a soul reaper.” My eyes darted to Tiffany on the phone with the ambulance. “Your sister is human, don’t worry. Her father isn’t yours.”

I couldn’t believe Grim’s words. The piece of shit on the floor… The man I’d always tried so hard to please and earn his love wasn’t my father.

“I speak the truth,” Grim stated, knowing I needed to hear it again.

“So I’m a soul reaper? What exactly is that?”

“A demon who survives by eating souls. Very few of your kind exist. Driven by their need for souls, they plunder and kill ruthlessly. Reapers have hunted and killed most of you. Your recklessness is how I found you.”

“Souls,” I uttered slowly. That meant I ate the soul of my sister’s father. “That’s what I’ve been taking from them?”

“Yes.”

Learning the truth sent a sharp pain through me. “Just do it. End me,” I said. According to the Grim Reaper, though, I’d always been a vile thing. “I don’t want to roam this world as I am.”

“You can change back into your human form, you know,” he said. “Soul Reapers have two forms—reaping and human.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask me how because I’m not one of you.” Grim glanced at Tiffany clinging to her father’s corpse. “Her father wasn’t a good soul, but he wasn’t completely bad. He was capable of salvation, but you stole it from him. He wasn’t the only one. You took away a chance of deliverance for a lot of people. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Shepherd? To live as what you are, you must learn the difference between good and bad. If I come for you a second time, it won’t be a warning. I don’t care how many of the wicked ones you devour. Although your actions help me in the long run, don’t take the good souls and ruin their chance for an afterlife.”

“Prudence,” Shepherd barked. “Get the fuck out of my head.”

My eyes shot open, and I bolted upright in my bed. Oh,Hades. I explored his memories again when he pleaded with me not to. My heart pounded. I’d never heard Shepherd so furious.

Dressed in a loose pair of black shorts, Shepherd ported into my room. I clutched the cover as he clenched his jaws tightly. “Would it kill you to stop peeking inside my mind?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said calmly.

“Cut the bull, Princess. You were searching. Just like on the first night when you went looking for my dick in a dream.”

His words stung my chest, and I recoiled as if he’d slapped me. I wasn’t accustomed to that version of Shepherd. “It happens subconsciously while I sleep.”

His eyes slanted. “How does that happen?Prudence,I asked you not to do it.”

“Just like you’re compelled to be around me because of your bond, I can’t help it.” Because he was my soulmate and my obsession, I couldn’t stop plucking through his mind. I yearned to know about my soulmate, including his secrets. But I couldn’t tell him any of that for fear he’d reject me.

“What difference does it make now that you know I killed the man I thought was my father? Nothing. It wouldn’t change anything between us because you’re waiting for someone else, right? A soulmate?”

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