Page 66 of Demon’s Snack

Our breaths come ragged and fast, filling the air with our cries of mutual passion. He loses himself in the moment, just as I do. I cling to him with all four of my limbs like a climber grasping their last guideline while dangling over the abyss.

I scream my delirious pleasure into his shoulder as the climax hits. My hips spasm, moving in sync with his thrusts as he empties his seed into me.

He holds me with exquisite tenderness, our breathing slowing. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

But no part of me regrets what just transpired between us.

9

CORIN

Neither of us moves after the lovemaking.

The archive chamber holds us in its damp, hidden quiet, with old stone sweating around us and the weak ward-lamp casting trembling amber light over the shelves, the cracked floor, and the places where my heat has warped records that were probably important to someone dead, corrupt, or both. Water drips steadily somewhere beyond the sealed maintenance gate, counting out seconds I cannot seem to use properly. Her breathing is steady now.

That is the first thing I check.

I listen past my own pulse, past the low thrum of infernal power still circling beneath my ribs, past the bond humming between us with a quiet intensity that makes the rest of the world feel muffled. Her breath moves in and out evenly. Her heart beats fast, but not wrong. There is no thinness to her aura, no frayed edge, no gray hollowness where drained life should show. The warmth under my hand belongs to her, fully and stubbornly hers.

I did not take from her.

The realization should settle me.

Instead, it nearly breaks me.

I pull back just enough to look at her face, searching for signs I am terrified I will find. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips slightly swollen from mine, and a loose piece of hair clings to the side of her neck where the damp air has curled it free. She looks shaken. She looks alive. She gazes at me with the same sharp attention she brings to contracts, except now there is heat beneath it.

“Say something,” I whisper as she tugs her dress down to restore her modesty.

Her brows draw together slightly. “About what?”

“About whether you’re all right.”

“I am breathing.”

“That is a low standard.”

“It is an essential one.”

“Isolde.”

The sound of her name comes out rougher than I intend, and her expression softens around the edges. She touches her thumb lightly to my sternum, just above where the worst of the heat had been tearing through me minutes ago.

“I am all right,” she says. “I feel warm, somewhat lightheaded, and dangerously curious, but I am not drained.”

My lungs loosen.

I close my eyes for half a second, and the relief that moves through me is so sharp it almost hurts. “Gods.”

“That was your primary concern?”

“That I might have eaten part of your soul while kissing you? Yes, that ranked fairly high.”

“I would have noticed.”

“You say that like soul damage is a draft from a bad window.”

Her mouth curves faintly, though her fingers tremble once against my chest before she stills them. “I would have noticed because I audit infernal contracts, soul-transfer clauses, debt-extraction rites, and energetic depletion records for a living. I know the signature of loss.”