Page 67 of Ravaged By a Devil

He pulls his phone from his leather jacket, scrolling through his screen with a stoic scowl. "I'll order dinner," he mumbles, his low voice vibrating in the quiet room. "What do you want?"

"I don't know," I tease, giving him a mischievous wink as I step backward toward the hallway. "Surprise me. I'll be right back."

I turn on my heel and head straight to my bedroom to shower and change into something more casual. I take a quick, hot shower to wash off the scent of smoke and alcohol from the club, then slip into a soft tank top and a pair of gray sweatpants.

By the time I return to the living room, the mouthwatering scent of hot food fills the air. Cain has taken the beer bottles out of the pack, laying them all out neatly on the coffee table beside an absolute feast.

There’s so much food he obviously took my "surprise me" literally. There’s a little bit of everything—gourmet burgers, truffle fries, sizzling garlic noodles, and spicy wings. My mouth waters instantly as I sink into the cushions right beside him.

I grab the remote from the table and start flicking through the movie streaming apps, intentionally bypassing the high-octane action films until I settle on a lighthearted romantic comedy.

Cain lets out a deep, dramatic groan beside me, resting his head back against the cushion, but he surprisingly doesn't object as I hit play.

We crack open two cold beers, digging into the food while the opening scenes roll. To my absolute surprise, Cain actually watches it. He sits there with his shoulder pressed against mine, taking slow sips of his beer and silently tracks the screen, even if his dark brow twitches every time the lead characters say something cheesy.

In a particularly sweet, cringey scene where the male lead runs through the rain to make a dramatic speech, Cain turns his head toward me, catching me already laughing into my hands.

He rolls his dark eyes, shaking his head with genuine confusion. "This is exactly why I don't like this genre of media," he rumbles, gesturing with his beer bottle toward the screen. "It requires you as the audience to completely suspend your common sense for the entire duration of it. Look at what just happened. That is very unrealistic."

I lean into his arm, my eyes glittering with amusement. "Love can also be unrealistic, Cain. You'll find that truth can be much stranger than fiction."

He lets out a sigh, shaking his head like he thinks I've completely lost my mind.

I take a slow sip of my beer, turning sideways on the cushion to look at him. "What's the last movie you watched, anyway?"

Cain goes quiet for a long second, his dark eyes fixed on mine as the light from the television flickers across his sharp jawline. He lowers his bottle to the table, his expression softening just a fraction.

"I don't remember," he admits, his low voice barely above a whisper. "I don't remember the last time I did something this ordinary."

The air between us turns charged with a sudden, quiet intimacy. We stare at each other for a long, breath-stealing moment, the soft dialogue of the movie fading into background noise—until a loud burst of music from a scene change pulls our attention back to the screen.

Cain clears his throat and finishes the last of his food and beer in quiet focus. I stay tucked into the corner of the couch, every single nerve ending hyper-aware of him sitting mere inches away.

Gradually, the low hum of the television and the exhaustion from the past few days catch up to me. My eyelids grow too heavy to fight, and I drift off to sleep right there on the couch.

I don’t know how long I sleep for, but when I wake up hours later, the room is bathed in the soft, flickering blue glow of the TV screen.

I don't open my eyes at first, assuming he'd have slipped out into the night the second I passed out. But as consciousness slowly returns, I realize two things: I am warm, wrapped neatly in my favorite fleece blanket, and my head is resting against something solid, broad, and steady.

Cain.

He didn't leave. He sat right here through the night, letting me sleep on his shoulder while he quietly watched the screen in the dark.

I freeze, holding my breath, refusing to make even the slightest twitch. A sudden, quiet realization hits me in the dark: being gentle—being vulnerable, sweet, and soft—seems to make this terrifying man far more uncomfortable than violence or conflict ever could.

If I move now, if I call attention to the fact that he's holding me while I sleep, he'll pull back, put his armor back on, and break the spell.

So I relax my breathing, nuzzle just a tiny bit deeper into the hard line of his shoulder, and close my eyes, letting the steady rhythm of his heartbeat lull me right back to sleep.

I pay for my sleeping position the next day at work.

Cain must have carried me to my room and laid me in bed at some point in the night, because I woke up this morning tucked under my own duvet and he was already gone.

But I clearly spent way too many hours sleeping at a bizarre angle against the solid iron of his shoulder, because my neck and back ache with every single step I take.

I picked up an extra afternoon shift last night before everything went down, and I almost called in to cancel this morning. The only thing that kept me from picking up the phone was my stubborn refusal to look unreliable. So I dragged my sore body out of bed and endured the shift.

Thankfully, the agonizing hours are finally over, and I don't have to step foot back in this place until tomorrow.