“Jared,” I moaned, as he pushed into me for the first time.
He kissed me again without saying a word, and together we moved in practiced rhythm, sighing into each other’s mouths, our hips rocking as more and more of the world fell away around us. This could be life, I thought, distantly, as my mind contemplated his offer to get up and leave New Orleans with him. We could go somewhere, anywhere, and do this every single night. A witch and a demon-blood, two powerful people, fighting for no one but each other. On no one’s side but our own.
But while that was only a fantasy, this was real. He was real. As we reached our climax together, and the real world came crashing down around us, reasserting itself more and more with every last push of his body into mine, I realized I didn’t care where we were or whose side we were fighting on, as long as we were doing it together.
And if we were going to fight, we may as well fight here. A witch and a demon-blood, outsiders to this city, abandoned by our friends, but champions all the same.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I woke up with a start, gasping and grasping at my throat, but fully aware that I had been dreaming. I had been sitting in a dark place, unable to see but fully aware of another presence near me. I had tried to talk to it, but the darkness had started to swell all around me, consuming me, suffocating me. It was a dream I was glad to be free from.
Around me, the room was quiet. It was afternoon, I knew, judging by the heat and the ambient sounds floating in from outside. I let my head rest on the pillow again and rubbed my eyes to wipe away the sleep, and when I opened them again, a demon’s face was within my field of vision.
“Hello, monkey witch,” the imp said, and I sucked in a deep breath of air and scrambled to sit upright, flailing as if to shake the imp off me. But the imp wasn’t sitting on my chest, he was sitting on the bed by my side. He cocked his head, his big, green eyes gleamed, and when he smiled, his mouth split to reveal a mouth full of tiny, razor-sharp teeth.
“Holy shit,” I said, exhaling. “Ho-ly shit. What are you doing in this bed?”
“This is where master sleeps,” he said. “Why is the monkey witch here?”
“The monk—I’m here because I was invited. Why are you here?”
“I lives here. This my home.”
“Your… what?”
Jared came into the bedroom, frowning. “There you are,” he said. “Sorry, Maddie—he isn’t used to guests.”
“He... huh?”
“He’s my roommate. Could you get off my bed, please?”
The pink-skinned imp sprang upright and threw himself into an enthusiastic forward roll, followed another one, until he was off the bed, landing with his hands in the air in a ta-da pose.
“He’s your roommate,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, approaching. “Here, drink some water.”
I took the glass Jared was offering and sipped it, then placed it down on the bedside table. “But he’s an imp; don’t they live in… somewhere else?”
Jared looked over his shoulder and smiled fondly. “He likes it here, and I like the company.”
The imp beamed, its rat tail swishing happily from side to side. “I leaves you now,” he said, “But I sees you again soon, monkey witch.”
“He hasn’t gotten bored of calling me that, has he?” I asked after the imp left.
“Don’t worry about it. He means it affectionately.”
“What time is it?”
Jared checked his watch. “A little after five.”
“Five!” I sat up. “We slept in until five?”
“You slept in until five. I got us beignets.”
I wasn’t sure I would have smelled them had he not mentioned them, but I caught a whiff of the delicious pastries now, and my stomach grumbled. “Oh, that does smell good.”
Jared brought the paper bag to the bed and let it sit on the side. He smiled, a little at first, and then widely. He didn’t have to tell me what the smile was about. One peek beneath the sheets, at my nakedness, and the sweet memories of what we had done—what we had spent all night and much of the morning doing—came flooding up.
“Could you pass me my dress?” I asked, a little more sheepishly than I would have liked.
He got up, walked over to the armchair in the corner of the room, and brought my dress to me. I slipped into it beneath the sheets, then emerged feeling a little more decent. I immediately started biting into a beignet, savoring the doughy, sugary goodness and letting nothing but the present moment exist around me. No vampires, no Tamara, no Remy—just Jared and beignets.
“Have you been up for long?” I asked, licking the excess powdered sugar off my lips.
“About an hour or so,” he said, “You looked so peaceful I didn’t have the heart to wake you. And we slept right through lunch, so getting you something to eat seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Seconded. I didn’t know how hungry I was until you said beignet.”
“Can’t blame you.” There was that smile again; the smile I couldn’t look at directly, but also couldn’t look away from. “Listen, we don’t have to talk about what happened if it’ll make things weird.”
I shook my head. “It’s not weird. I knew what I was doing.”
“And how do you feel?”
I thought about it, because I didn’t want to answer him half-heartedly, or disingenuously. I really thought about what had happened, how it had happened, and how many times it had happened, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was exactly what I had wanted for a long time. A long time. Ever since the first kiss we shared, I had wanted this, only I had been too… what, afraid? Looking at him now, at the way the sunlight framed his face, left me wondering what in the hell I was afraid of. Jared was a good guy, and this, sitting here with him, didn’t just feel good, it felt right.
“I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time,” I said, reaching for his hand.
Jared took it. “You mean that?”
“I do. Do you think I’d lie to you?”
“No. I don’t. It’s just…” He held my gaze, and in that instant, it was as if the whole world had taken a breath and held it. The birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped whispering, and the heat lost its power over me. “I’m all in, Madison,” he said. “All in.”
“You… are?”
“I am, and I know it’s a lot to ask so soon, but I need to know if you are too.”
The world kept waiting to breathe, and with every second that passed, every second that went by where I didn’t reply to him, I felt like I was killing the world; depriving it of the air it needed to breathe. Jared too. And I didn’t want that. I wanted him, and it was time he knew it.
“I’m all in too,” I said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to—”
“No,” he said, “No apologies. I’m just glad we’re here. You’re the most important thing in my life right now. You have been ever since we met.”
My heart was starting to swell. “You really feel that way?”