“Can I feed you, Fee?”
His jaw brushed my forehead, and I tilted my chin slightly so I could nuzzle it with the tip of my nose. His free hand moved to rest on my hip, and he dipped his head so our cheeks caressed. He was going to kiss me, and I was about to let him.
“Mal? You’re back.”
Mal’s body went rigid, and then he released me.
Disappointment crushed my lungs. I dropped my chin to my chest and took a moment before glancing at the female demon wrapped in a short silk robe who was standing at the bottom of the corridor that led to Mal’s quarters.
“We had a date last night, remember?” she said. She didn’t even bother to look at me, the woman Mal had almost been about to canoodle with.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at Mal. He probably thought this was going to be weird after I confessed to falling for him last night. God, I needed to keep my mouth shut and stop wearing my heart on my damn sleeve, and I needed to keep my fucking distance.
“Fee?” Mal sounded torn.
I smiled brightly at him. “So, I’ll see you later?”
His gaze was hooded. “Let me know as soon as you hear from the witch.”
“Will do.”
“Mal, baby.” The woman pouted. “Aren’t you hungry?”
I felt sick. Fucking sick as fuck, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from his emerald one, and for a moment, I was sure there was indecision in those eyes. For a moment, I thought he’d tell her to fuck off and come with me instead, and my heart did a little skip, but then he turned toward her, and my stupid fucking heart cracked a little.
I walked away before my eyes could well up because I was done crying over shit I had no control over.
Conah was at the table forking scrambled eggs into his mouth while reading a book that looked like it could be used as a doorstop. His golden hair was damp from the shower, but when he looked up, his sapphire eyes were red-rimmed with dark smudges beneath them.
He looked knackered. “Have you slept at all?”
“I was reading,” he said. “There are eggs and bacon on the hot plate. Eat.” His gaze slipped over my shoulder. “Mal?”
I grabbed a plate from the cupboard. “With his lady friend.”
Conah sighed. “Ah. Yes. But he was with you last night.”
The emphasis on the word with wasn’t lost on me. Looked like Conah had his fishing rod out and was hoping to catch some juicy deets. Not happening. “We hung out, that’s all.”
“So, you didn’t…”
Oh, my God. “Seriously? How is that any of your business?”
He tucked in his chin and set his fork down. “It isn’t.”
“Good.” I piled my plate with food, poured a cup of coffee, and then joined him at the table.
“But did you?” he asked.
Argh. “Fucking hell, Conah, what are you? A teenager desperate for locker room gossip? What is your problem?”
He flinched as if my words were pellets aimed at his face. “My problem is that I can’t find a fucking solution to your problem. My problem is that it’s looking more and more like you’ll have to go on the run.” He leaned his forearms on the table. “And my hope is that as long as you’re connected to at least one of us, you might decide you want to come home when Lilith forgets about you.”
He wanted to have a connection with me, even if it was through one of the other Dominus.
He still wanted me.
Why did that knowledge surprise me? Why did anything surprise me anymore?
I stared at him, and his mouth tightened, but he didn’t look away, and the longer we maintained eye contact, the harder it got for me to drop my gaze, because even red-rimmed and dark-smudged, his gaze was a compelling beast. He was my first crush in this new world. The first guy I’d considered offering my heart to in a long time, and he was sitting here telling me he would have given it to me if he hadn’t already given it away.
“You’re getting married.”
“Yes,” he said. “And until I met you, I was content. I was happy, and now I feel as if I’m being torn in two. I love Kiara, always have and always will. She’s my soulmate, but I’m in love with you.”
The pulse at the base of my throat quickened, and laughter bubbled up my throat because this was just fucking dandy, wasn’t it? This was fucking awesome. Another man who wanted me but wasn’t free to love me. Whoop-de-do pass me a fucking flapjack.
I picked up my fork and began to eat.
“Did you hear what I said?” Conah asked.
“Yeah, I heard you, and I don’t want to hear it again. You’re marrying Kiara, by choice. You don’t get to tell me you’re in love with me. Ever.”
He sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
My chest ached with tears as I ate. Fuck relationships and fuck love. Just fuck it.
“What happened between you and Mal?” Conah asked again.
I had to hand it to the guy, he was about as persistent as a fungal infection.
I set my fork down with a sigh. “You want to know what happened? I kissed him. I told him I was falling for him, and he told me that he didn’t want me to, and then we played Chaos Dimensions. End of story. And if you look at me with pity, I will stab you with this fork.”
He looked crestfallen. “No, Fee. I don’t pity you. I pity him. I was hoping you’d be able to change things for him, but I see now that he won’t allow that to happen.”
What was he talking about? “Change things?”
“You know about his curse, right?”
“The feeding off sex thing? Yes.”
“And you know why he was cursed?”
“No. He never said.”
Conah sat back in his seat. “It’s not my place to say, but in this case, I feel an exception needs to be made. Mal had a soulmate once. Gailan. They were the best of friends. Unlike most demons, Mal found his soulmate at a young age, and the pair practically grew up together. One night in their twentieth year, they were meant to meet at a local tavern for a drink. It was a regular weekly thing, except this time Mal decided not to go. He spent the night with a daemon woman, a female that he knew Gailan was in love with. The next morning, he heard that Gailan had been set upon in the tavern in a brawl and killed. Mal blamed himself. He believed if he’d kept his rendezvous with his soulmate, Gailan would still be alive. The fact it happened while he was fucking the woman Gailan was secretly in love with made his guilt even stronger, and so the curse was activated.”
“I don’t get it…what do you mean the curse was activated?”
“If a soulmate dies at his soulmate’s hand, then the killer is cursed.”
“But Mal didn’t kill Gailan.”
“But he believes he did. He believes he’s guilty, and that’s enough for the curse to take hold.”
The memory I’d seen in the Eye when I’d gone into Mal’s head made sense now. The man on the slab had been Gailan.
“Mal believes he doesn’t deserve to be happy,” Conah continued. “That he doesn’t deserve to love and have a real emotional connection to anyone. His guilt is so strong that it feeds the curse, which in his case is the need for continuous, meaningless sex to survive.”
“Because he was having sex when his soulmate was killed?”
“Yes. The curse takes a different form for each demon it afflicts. There are only a handful of cases documented. Soulmates don’t usually murder each other.”
“But it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have known what would happen. He didn’t cause it. The curse should know that.”
“The curse feeds off the energy it receives, and Mal’s guilt is so strong it’s killing him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two months before you joined us, he told us that the curse was done with him and that soon it would be over. He sounded relieved about it.”
“It can’t do that, can it? It can’t kill him?”
“I don’t know. But unless he can find the conviction to let go of the guilt and take away the curse’s power, then yes, he probably will die. The curse will take him.”
The fucking curse. It made sense now. He thought he was going to die, so he was pulling away from me. He was protecting me. The weight on my chest lifted a little.
There had to be a way to help him, and backing off wasn’t it. He needed to know he was worthy of love. I wasn’t going to give up on him.
I’d save Mal because there was no way I was losing a piece of my heart.
I had to hope Vi came through with the amulet, because the thought of leaving now was just as bad as having to go into the Underealm unprotected.
Chapter Six
Cyril slithered into my room as I tied my hair up into a high ponytail, ready for patrol. Nox would be picking me up in half an hour. I had no idea where we were patrolling tonight, but it didn’t matter. Anything to pass the time.
Cyril climbed up onto the bed and coiled up. “Any newsss from Vi?”
“Not yet. Have you seen Cora?”
“Briefly last night. She was gone by dawn.”
Probably with Vi, working on getting me the amulet. I could always count on Cora.
“You will be okay, won’t you?” Cyril asked.
He sounded worried. I sat by him on the bed. “I’ll be fine. Worst-case scenario, we take a long vacation.”
“We?” He raised his head to pin me with his beady eyes. “You’ll take me with you?”
Could I do that? Force them to go on the run with me? Force them to leave stability behind?
“Without you or Cora…no one hears me,” Cyril said softly, almost wistfully.
I hadn’t questioned the fact that once we’d come to the Underealm, Cora had been able to hear Cyril. None of us had pointed it out. But looking back now, it made sense. She was a tulpa, a part of me. There was so much she could do that she hadn’t realized. She’d been bound by perception, and once that shattered, she’d blossomed. There was no doubt in my mind that she’d want to come with me, but I couldn’t let her do that. If the time came and I had to go on the run, I’d do it alone.