Page 81 of Devil

“That’s easy for you to say,” she whispers. And then she shivers as my thumbs slide back down the straps and find the erect tips of her breasts.

“It is easy because it’s true. The people with money will forget about anyone whom they think is less important than them—which is most people, by the way.”

“And the second group of people?”

I’ve succeeded in distracting her because she’s looking down now, breathing heavily as she watches my thumbs work over her silk-covered nipples.

“They work for foundations and nonprofits, and while we might care what they think of us because a lot of them are decent people, they are too overworked and institutionally exploited to remember anyone who isn’t a future connection or a donor. I promise no one will be scrutinizing you or assessing you for proper gala behavior—which there isn’t any, really, except to drink and stay awake during the auction.” I pull the straps of the bra down her shoulders and then down even more, which tugs the bra to her waist and has the pleasing effect of trapping her arms at her sides. “I’ll handle everyone and everything who comes your way. And if you want to slip away and hide because it’s still too much, you may.”

“Really?”

I bend and swirl my tongue over her lovely pink nipple before gently taking it into my mouth. She’s racked with a hard shiver, and I feel her rock her hips against me, seeking pressure and friction. “Really,” I promise before moving to her other nipple and sucking.

“I don’t know.” Her voice is punctured with lust now, the nervousness almost entirely gone. “What if I find a way to mess up?”

“Then you mess up, and we come home, and nothing changes. You make art and I fuck you. Lilith bites our fingers. We make toaster waffles at night. Life is exactly the same. Besides,” I add, dropping my hands to her pants and working the button free, “I thought we already agreed that I was going to be the worst thing that happened to you this year. You’re not going to make me compete with an overblown bake sale with a pop-up media wall, are you?”

I’m rewarded with a small, sweet smile. “No, Ry. I won’t.”

34

BIRDIE

THREE WEEKS LATER

“Everything okay?”Bell’s warm voice comes over the phone. At the sound of it, something eases in my chest. Unclenches at the base of my throat.

“It is now.” There’s a small smile on my face as I walk to the studio, Lilith stalking behind me and waiting for a chance to attack my heels. I leave the studio door propped open so she can flit between the studio and the house, even though she generally only wants to be where I am—or where Bell is, particularly if she’s ready for a nap. When we first adopted Lilith—or she adopted us—she slept in a cat bed atop our bed, on my side so I could pet her as she fell asleep. That lasted for three or four nights, until she started slinking out of the cat bed while we were unconscious and curling up next to Bell’s head on the pillow. And now every morning we wake to her in a new spot—behind his knees, loafed on his hip, decanted into the wedge between his chest and my back. She’s been fussy the last two nights while he’s been gone for work, meowing and chirruping and prancing around his pillow until finally giving up and sleeping in the crook of my arm instead.

I’ve felt the same. Maybe worse. I’ve slept alone for years and years, and after a small handful of weeks in Bell’s bed, I’m completely ruined.

Typical of him.

“I’m switching to a video call,” he says. “One second.”

I pull the phone away from my ear in time to see his face appear on my screen. Handsome, sunny, in a good mood. The beauty mark above his mouth drawing attention to how wide his smile is, how straight and even his teeth are, how sharp the edges of his lips. He’s in a linen suit today, pressed but still summery, and his eyes are such an aching shade of blue in the sunlight that they almost make me wish I worked with paint instead of wood.

“There’s my girl,” he says, smile tilting up on one side. The smile of a born charmer, but the eyes, as beautiful as they are, betray that eerie greed he only reveals to me. It’s still disturbing, but I’ve started to accept that something in me likes being disturbed—that I crave him looking at me like that.

That sometimes I wonder what he sees when I look at him.

“Are you busy?” I ask as Lilith bounds up to a workbench and starts hunting for something to slaughter. “I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy.”

“I’m not,” he reassures me. He’s walking outside, sun glinting on the platinum in his hair. “We just finished the site visit, and now we’re going back to the hotel until dinner to work in our rooms. God, I’ve missed your face.”

I duck my head a little, even though he’s not even here. But it makes me happy.

I’ve grown far, far too used to the way he makes me happy.

“I miss you too,” I murmur. “Even though we talked this morning.” And last night, and the night before that, Bell skipping drinks with his firm’s clients both nights so he could hole up in his hotel room and make me do unchaste things on video calls while he watched.

“It’s not enough,” he says, a thread of unhappiness entering his voice. It’s not the playful pout he gets sometimes before I’m pounced on nor the grouchiness he gets before I leave for a shift at Buddy’s but something different. Something almost wounded, like he’s personally betrayed by every minute we have to spend apart.

But before I can pin that unhappiness down in my mind, he’s tilting that grin at me again, the light changing over his face as he walks through his hotel lobby. “Show me what you’re working on today. Have you finished the sketch?”

“Yes.” I flip the camera around so he can see the paper I’ve tacked to a new basswood block. The penitent criminal. I finished the impenitent criminal a week ago, all the refining work, sanding, etching, and oiling, and immediately flung myself into sketching the penitent criminal, his face already clear in my mind. I’ve never finished a statue as fast as I did this last one; I’ve never jumped into another piece so quickly. I haven’t been able to truly make anything for seven years, and a weary, frightened part of me was worried the first day in my new studio. That I would set the chisel to the wood and then nothing would happen, that I would forget how to see the form trapped inside, how to listen to the burning voice only I could hear.

But something did happen.