Page 84 of Devil

When he spoke, his voice was level and uninflected. “I hope you have more time for things that aren’t work now, and that surviving is a little bit easier. As for not being friend material, why don’t you let Amber decide that?”

My own mouth twisted, a million reasons why this sounded awful rearing up inside me. Finally, I said, “I already have a friend, Ry. I have you.”

I thought he’d like that. It seemed like something that would please him ordinarily, but instead, he closed his eyes. I could see the tendons shifting in his neck, like he was feeling a great strain, but it only lasted a few seconds.

He drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Birdie, as much as I’d like to claim all of you, I shouldn’t. It’s not…a good thing for me to do. You need someone to talk to who doesn’t give a shit about me, who doesn’t even know me, who will always put you first in their concern.”

I only stared at him, and he sighed, a rueful kind of slant coming to his mouth.

“You have no idea how fucking hard this is,” he said, the words on the edge of an unhappy laugh. “No idea how much I want to keep every fucking minute of yours to myself. I want to be your best friend and your savior and your worst nightmare, and I am howlingly jealous of every person who gets your attention who isn’t me. The owner of your gas station, the person in the pew behind us when we give the sign of peace, my own brothers, ourcat. If I could lock you in a tower, I would. If I could steal you away, I would. If I could make it so you never needed anyone or anything else but me, I would, and I think you still don’t understand how much I mean this. I don’t think you have any sense of what I would do if I hadn’t been thinking about this for seven years. If we hadn’t been interrupted at Evelyn and I’d been able to?—”

He stopped, his breathing rough, his eyes dark, something wild and inhuman in him. Then he tossed his head like he was trying to shake himself free of a brutal delirium.

I felt like I was still caught in it, fevered by his words. His jealousy, his desire. I loved how it felt, and it feltright, and what if I wantedhimlike that? It had never occurred to me that I had any right to be jealous of Bell’s time, but that’s how I’d felt when he left me alone that first week, wasn’t it? Desperate for his proximity and attention, wishing I had the power to make him return.

“You should have friends, Birdie,” Bell said after he’d mastered himself again. “You should have a world outside me. Please.”

I agreed, mostly because the effort it took him to suggest something so deeply against his own desires had him trembling almost, pale lipped and sick looking. And because the thrill I’d felt as he confessed the depths of his possessiveness frightened me even as I felt it.

If I felt like this less than two months into our deal, what would I feel like at the end? How would I survive being away from him? Going from him watching me, feeding me, washing me, letting me sleep tucked into his chest to nothing at all?

How would I go from feast to famine? From milk and honey to sackcloth and ashes?

I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, but the alternative—ending things now before I got more and more lost in him—well…that was no longer any alternative at all.

35

BIRDIE

“Almost there,”Bell murmurs. “You’re doing so well.”

It’s a few weeks later, the evening of the gala, and I’m bent over Bell’s kitchen table, with black satin shoved up to my waist and my face buried in my arms. I’m making low, muffled noises, and my high heels are shifting on the floor as I try and fail not to squirm.

He is sliding into my backside with cruel, unrelenting patience.

“Shh, I know, I know,” comes his soft croon. “Breathe for me.”

I try and try, and I’m shaking and clammy and goose bumps are everywhere, and I just don’t know if I can endure this. The invasion is setting off alarms up and down my nerve endings, and the pressure isn’t pressure at all—it’spain. It’s pain despite the overly generous amount of lube slicked between us, despite the play beforehand, despite the toys I’ve had there before. It’s impossible not to tense against it, impossible not to brace.

“Sweet thing,” Bell says with pity. “This is the worst part, I promise.”

“Like you would know,” I mumble, resisting the urge to roll my forehead on my hands in an effort to self-soothe. I’ve done my hair and makeup for the event tonight, and both things took so much time and care that I’m not willing to risk my efforts even while it feels like I’m being split in half.

He laughs. “Oh, pretty bird. Yes, I would know.”

I think about our earlier conversation, the man in London. Maybe he does know.

Bell finds my thigh and slides his hand down until he’s able to cup my leg just above the bend of my knee. He coaxes my knee up to the table so that I’m only standing on one leg and I’m now so much more open than I was before. Above my hips, everything is a tide of satin, but I’m completely exposed below, and he lets out a long exhale.

“I wish you could see what I see when you’re spread open,” he tells me, lust making his voice raw. “Your gorgeous legs. Your amazing ass. Your cunt is so sweet like this, wet and begging for me, and I can see the pretty star of your asshole. It’s so small compared to what I’m trying to put in there.” He resumes pushing inward, one hand guiding his thick erection, the other on the cheek currently lifted from my new position with a knee on the table. “It’s just the head that hurts,” he assures me. “Bear down on me, just like with your toys, and together we’ll make it through.”

“Together,” I gasp as he wedges in and in and in. “Like—this is—so hard on you?—”

There’s a feeling almost like a pop as his glans slips past the tightly muscled ring and fully into my body, and he groans like he’s been shot. “You have no fucking idea how hard this is on me,” he replies hoarsely. “I’m not going to—oh my God, Birdie, even through the condom, it’s so good. What the fuck—what the fuck?—”

He’s pushed in a few more inches, and I’m squirming so hard that he has to grab me by the hip and by the thigh up on the table. It’s not agony anymore, but it’s also not a feeling I can properly catalog. It can’t bepleasure, but the primitive sliding of him, the raw, biological reality of friction and intrusion—it’s almost like it could be. And then there’s Bell himself behind me, a large hand on my thigh, the harsh breathing of a man enjoying himself, the undeniable strength of him as he holds me open on the table to fuck me.

I lift my head, and directly in front of me, I see us in the glass reflection of his office wall, my stolen breath curling even farther away from my chest as I take in the sight. Him in his tuxedo, jacket still on, bow tie still knotted, his hair straightened and styled sleekly back like a movie star’s. His hard jaw is clenched as he looks down to where he’s just hilted himself inside the last place he has claimed, and he looks so put-together right now and also like someone possessed, his expression so eerily uncivilized as he runs his hands up to my cheeks and spreads them ever farther apart.