Page 79 of Devil

“I suppose it won’t be the Church for you,” muses Birdie. She’s obeyed my silent command and is petting me just above the nape of my neck now. “You’ll have to wait for love.”

It’s a testament to how perfect the moment is—my little artist’s fingers in my hair, her art nearby, a feline lunatic scampering over my work—that it takes a minute for her words to sink in.

You’ll have to wait for love.

Three or four very strong feelings crash through me in the space of a single inhale—God, you’re killing me, pretty bird—but by the time I exhale, I’m in control of myself again. She doesn’t know. And she doesn’t know because I haven’t wanted her to know, because I’m not ready to risk scaring her off. It’s taken so much planning to get her here, and I’ve waited years to have her, and if I have to wait a little longer to make everything quite plain, I’ll do it.

But there is something I need her to understand right now. “You do know there’s no one else, right? You are the only one I’m spending time with. The only one I’m having sex with. There is only you.”

Her fingers pause, just a flicker of hesitation, and then she starts petting me again. “You don’t have to say that, Ry. You don’t owe me your…” I can practically feel her searching for the right word. “Fidelity. I understand what this is.”

As much as I’m enjoying being spoiled by her caresses, this needs to be addressed. I turn and find her waist in a single move, and from there, it’s easy to drag her into my lap. Her hands find my neck in an automatic search for balance, and I keep one arm wrapped around her waist as I stroke the backs of my fingers down her jaw.

“My devotion to you isn’t born out of selflessness or a personal code of honor,” I say. “Look at my face when I say this, darling—yes, just like that—I’m devoted to you because I’m selfish, because I’m greedy, because I refuse to settle for anything less than what I want.” I drop my hand to her chest, the place above her heart that she often presses her own hand to without thinking about it. “You can trust me when I tell you that you’re the only one, because I’m not telling you that to woo you or to placate you. If you really understandwhat this is, then you know I don’t need to do either of those things to keep you in my bed. I’m telling you this to warn you. I don’t want you to doubt for a second the hold you have on my attention, and you should know that it would be dangerous for you to doubt it anyway.”

I’m gripping her harder now, like I can hold her so tightly that she could never leave, and I force myself to ease up.

“But you mentioned…” A breath for courage. “It seems like before me, you were prolific—or at least that’s the impression I had.”

“Oh, I likeprolific. That sounds so polite, like I’ve just been industrious with my time. Much more decorous thanfuckboy.” I nuzzle her jaw. The scent of apples and sawdust greets me again and I inhale her between kisses. Heaven.

She shivers when I press my lips to the spot just beneath her ear. “I’m not passing judgment,” she says. “I just didn’t expect you to change your habits for me.”

Why didn’t you?I want to growl at her.Why don’t you ever expect anything good for yourself? Why don’t you ever ask for it?I’ve never known anyone to endure miserable thing after miserable thing with such lonely, rigid acceptance, like she’s in Purgatory ahead of her time and there’s nothing left to do but allow herself to be refined in a fire that won’t even keep her warm.

But that is why we’re here. That’s why she’s got a closet full of clothes and a studio and a truck and help for her sister, because if I can douse the dark, corrosive flames licking at her skin, maybe she will see that she never deserved to burn in the first place.

That’s all for later, though, once she’s been here long enough to learn she’s adored and entitled to that adoration. For now, I just kiss her jaw again. “Nothing is changing, sweetheart. I fucked whoever I liked before you, and right now, I’m still fucking whoever I like. It just happens thatwhoever I likeis now a group of one.”

She shifts so she can look at me. Even sitting in my lap, she’s the tiniest bit shorter, and she has to lift her eyes to meet mine. “Has that ever happened before?” she asks. “That you only wanted to be with one person?”

I touch her chin with a curled knuckle. “Jealous, Birdie?”

“I want to know how long it lasted. Why it ended.” Her expression is serious as her eyes search mine. “I want to know if the same thing will happen with me and if I should be ready for the possibility.”

Because she wants to make sure she can still help her sister. Not because she wants to be with me for my sake.

Which is fine,obviously. That’s how I got her here with me.

It still stings.

“There was a teacher in college…” I start, and she shakes her head, anot in the mood for a jokeheadshake.

“Be truthful with me. Please.”

“But I am being truthful. You were all I wanted at Evelyn, all I saw. After I couldn’t find you, I coped as best I could. I went back to being…prolific…but with you on my mind always. I knew the moment I found you that I’d drop anything and everything because anything else would be second-best, and I’m not a second-best kind of guy, Birdie. I’m just not.”

I can see the tremulous flutter of hope in her, the crushing wall of doubt. “I’m supposed to believe that I held that kind of allure for you for seven years? And that you never found anyone else you felt the same way about in all that time?”

“I hope you believe it, even though I can’t make you,” I tell her. “But I hope you understand that most people don’t stalk someone and offer hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for their company because there’s no allure at all.”

Her mouth bunches to the side as she considers this. She’s not offended by the transactional framing of our relationship; part of me wishes she were. “I guess that’s true,” she says. “You’ve always been honest about the ways you aren’t a gentleman.”

I grin. “I can learn to be one. If you want.”

“It’s probably what I should want.” But she doesn’t ask me to become such a thing. I didn’t think she would.

“As it happens,” I say, “there was a time a couple years ago when I thought maybe I’d met someone. He was sad like you and had a fetish for being used, also like you. But at the end of the day, he wasn’t you, lovely as he was.”