by Mary Calmes
When a warder killed a demon, a black hole materialized beneath us, a portal to a hell dimension opening up to receive the slain. I stepped behind the carcass, Marcus jumped back, and the demon was sucked through the floor and disappeared. All that remained was the splatter of blood, Normally it was small; in this case….
Marcus smiled, waggling his eyebrows. “Nothing says Christmas like dead demon.”
I flicked my hand, and blood and gore fell in a soggy clump to the floor. It made that wet gloppy noise as it puddled close to my feet.
“Gross.” Marcus chuckled.
“How are you not covered in demon?”
“I jumped free of the splatter zone, man,” he teased, touching the lapel of his suit. “This is Prada, you know.”
I rolled my eyes before I turned to Brad, his sister, her boyfriend—I still wasn’t positive about that and didn’t care enough to ask—and Brad’s fuck buddy. “You need one of those power washers,” I said, gesturing to the gore on the walls, the mantle, and the staircase. “Or a new house.”
“You killed the demon.” Joanna’s eyes were huge as she stared at us. “Won’t another one just come in its—”
“No,” Marcus cut her off. “The covenant is only with one creature. The debt is a singular transaction. None other will ever come.”
“But I got a miracle from that demon,” she told him. “I have to pay my debt.”
“We don’t pay debts to demons,” I said flatly.
“But neither do we normally make deals with demons in the first place,” Marcus clarified.
“I don’t know how to—I don’t… thank you.”
It wasn’t her fault—or it was, but wasn’t. It was their aunt’s fault for putting the horrific cycle in motion. I didn’t really care; I just wanted to take a shower.
“I feel soggy,” I said to Marcus as we walked toward the opening where the front door used to be. As I moved, I made a wet squelching noise that made my friend smile.
“You look like hell,” he said, chuckling low as he made a show of allowing me out first.
Every now and then warders lost pieces of clothing to the hunt, and I suspected that my boots were goners. “I bet I look like I’ve been dipped in forty-weight.”
“You look like a whale blew up on you.”
I made a noise of disgust as I walked toward the edge of the porch with him.
“Malic!”
I turned, and Dylan was there.
“Don’t come near me,” I warned. “I’m covered in demon guts, and I don’t want it on you.”
He never listened to me.
Bolting forward, he leaped, and I had to catch him so he wouldn’t fall. Safe in my embrace, he hugged me tight with arms and legs, squirming for closeness as he looked into my face.
“You scared me to death! Did you hit Brad?”
“No, but look,” I said, walking back to the doorway with him. Inside, the three people—I wasn’t sure where the bed warmer had gone—were surveying the damage to the one room for the first time. Realization that Christmas at Brad’s house was impossible was finally dawning.
“Oh.” Dylan’s smile was radiant, and everyone heard the happiness in his voice. “Awesome.”
“My home is destroyed,” Brad cried as the man who had been with him, his fuck buddy, squeezed by me, careful not to get any of the blood that covered me on him. He had obviously ducked back upstairs for a second to grab his clothes and was now running for the hills. Not that I could blame him. He bolted down the steps, yelling at Brad to never, ever, call him again.
Dylan and I both watched him run and then turned back to the remaining three people in the room that looked like it belonged in a slaughterhouse.
“How am I going to explain this to my family?”
“You need a power washer,” Dylan suggested, logically.
I chuckled over the comment.
“What?” my hearth asked, turning to look at me.
“That’s exactly what I said.”
Dylan laughed softly. “Walk me back to my house so I can hose you off.”
“Wait,” Marcus said, striding by us, walking through the rubble of the living room and up to Brad.
I wasn’t sure where he was going. “What’re you—”
Marcus nailed Brad on the jaw, sending him crashing down over what remained of his coffee table. It was only hard enough to stun him—Marcus didn’t use a quarter of his full power—but still, it was scary.
“Brad!” his sister Joanna yelled. The boyfriend yelled, too, as he scrambled over to them. He stepped in front of Marcus, which was pretty brave; I gave him a lot of credit even though he blanched as he did it.
“Don’t even look in the direction of the Shaw house,” Marcus warned, shoving the boyfriend out of the way easily so he could hover threateningly over Brad. “Don’t speak to them, don’t go over to borrow something—in fact, I would move as soon as possible.” He took a breath. “You fucked with my brother because he wouldn’t fuck you, you asshole piece of shit. I should drop you into a small dark place and let you be eaten alive.”
All three people had tears in their eyes, all were shaking, all terrified. Even though I felt some pity for Joanna and her boyfriend, it wasn’t enough that I was going to call Marcus back to me.
“If I ever hear from Dylan that you spoke to him, his folks, his sister, or any of their friends… you’re dead.”
They stared at Marcus as he turned and stalked back to Dylan and me. On the porch, Dylan thanked him.
“No thanks necessary.” Marcus grinned, heading down the steps as I followed with my hearth still in my arms.
“So you’d really go back and kill a man?” I teased my friend.
“No, Mal, you know I don’t kill people.” Marcus sighed deeply. “But he doesn’t.”
And he was right.
VII
MARCUS WENT inside and grabbed towels from the upstairs bathroom for us, telling Lily, he recounted, that Dylan and I had both fallen into mud outside. She probably would have questioned the story from anyone else, but this was Marcus smiling down at her from his towering height, and she was smitten with him. I was certain, when he hugged her good-bye, that she had shivered just a little. Once he was back outside with us, he gave me a head tip as Dylan prepared to hose me off around the side of the house. He wasn’t about to hug me, or my hearth. The suit was expensive after all. We watched him as he stepped into the vortex and vanished.
Dylan had just stripped out of his blood-smeared clothes—it was only the fronts that were stained, and the handprints on the seat of his jeans—before proceeding to hose me off. Just before I froze to death, he quit, pronouncing me gore-free, and then bundled up both sets of clothes and ran them back to the garbage can in the garage. I was shivering when he came back, but so was he, and I yelled at him to get his ass inside. He was laughing as he led me through the living room. His father reminded me that it was too cold to be running through the sprinklers outside in the yard.
“You’re a riot, Jeff,” I called to him from the stairs.
“I know,” he said, sounding like he had amused himself.
“I don’t know about this being accepted into the family thing,” I grumbled as I followed Dylan, trudging behind him.
He was still chuckling and walked into the bathroom before me, closing and locking the door behind us. I watched him turn on the hot water and then drop the dirty towel he had used as a covering on the floor. Seeing the lean, muscular frame made my stomach flip over. It was always a pleasure to see Dylan naked.
“Come here,” he said, opening the frosted glass door and stepping into the shower under the spray.
I peeled the cold wet towel off, my pale skin covered in goose bumps underneath.
When I stepped into the cubicle with him, he plastered his warm body to mine.
“Oh fuck, you feel nice,” I said, running my hands all over him, his hair, his face, down his back to his ass.
He wiggled free then turned
me around and pushed me forward against the wall. I stood there, face pressed to the sweating tile as I felt a mesh sponge glide over my back. It felt good. The closeness, his hands on me, scrubbing, soaping, and his grip on my arms, pushing me down, made me smile.
When I was on my knees, he washed my hair, but with my face inches from his groin, I could not resist temptation. Leaning forward, I took the length of him down the back of my throat.
“Oh God!”
He convulsed with pleasure as I began to suck and stroke him with my tongue, my hands on his hips as I devoured him.
“Malic, I don’t wanna come,” he whined, pulling back, wriggling away from me, out of the shower in seconds.
I stood, smiling, and washed myself off, letting the whole experience with Brad Darby and the demon go, keeping only the love of my hearth and the support of my friends with me.
There was the snick of the magnetic latch on the door, and when I turned, a lube-slicked hand wrapped around my cock.
“You need to shower.” I smiled as he stroked me. “And that is just gonna wash off, you know.”
“Not right away,” he told me, adding more to my dick from the bottle of lube he’d brought back from the hamper he’d hidden it in the day we arrived.
“Baby—”
“Shut up,” he commanded me, closing the bottle, letting it fall to the floor before he looked up at me. “Pick me up and fuck me against the wall.”
“Love—”
“Malic!” he yelled, and I realized how close he was to falling apart. “I need you.”
I grabbed him, lifted him, and draped his knees over my arms as I pressed him back against the tiled wall.
“Oh, baby, please.”
He was trembling with need, and when I pushed in, drove up into him with one hard thrust, he moaned my name.
“Did I hurt—”
“Fuck, Malic, you feel so good. I can feel your cock get harder and thicker, and the stretch is—fuck! How do you get my gland every… oh.” He whimpered in the back of his throat.
He was so beautiful, so hot, so drugged with pleasure that he made my heart hammer in my chest. “I don’t think I can… stop.”
“Why the hell would you stop?” he moaned, writhing on the wall, in my hands. “Fuck me, Malic. Fill me up. I need to know you’re safe and strong. I need to know who I belong to.”
He was so tight, and as my cock throbbed inside of him, his muscles rippled around me, the suction fierce as I was pulled in deeper. When I eased out a fraction only to sheathe myself fully inside, his fingers dug into my back as he lifted his head for a kiss.
I devoured his mouth, taking possession, and my tongue tangled with his as I began to pound into him, the strokes hammering and hard.
He broke the kiss to breathe, head back in ecstasy as I leaned in and sucked and licked and kissed his throat, leaving the marks I knew he craved.
When he was panting, I fisted his dripping cock in my hand and stroked him as he screamed my name. Seconds later he spurted over my abdomen, the muscles in his ass clamping down so hard, spasming around me, that I came hard, buried inside of him, flooding his channel, still thrusting into him as I shuddered through my orgasm.
It took long minutes to recover, but when I did, when he did, I lifted him gently off my shaft and put him on his feet. I washed him, his hair, gently cleaned him up, and then lifted him again, this time carrying him out onto the thick rug. I was still holding onto him, afraid, from his flushed skin and glazed eyes, that he would faint.
“You okay?” I asked him, making sure he could stand before I darted to the window and opened it. The icy air blew in, and I watched him revive a little. “You look like you’re gonna pass out.”
He purred, and I saw his eyes flutter.
“Shit,” I groaned, but I made it to him before his eyes closed and he hit the floor.
The man had swooned, and holding him in my arms, I had a minute of fear wash through me. What if he….
“Malic,” he murmured, coming around that fast. “Need water, need to cool down, need to lie down… need you to suck my dick.”
“That last one is crap,” I growled, not wanting to put him down, but not wanting to walk out of the bathroom naked with an equally bare-assed Dylan in my arms.
“Love to watch you do it.” He sighed, and I watched, amazed, as his dick began to harden again.
“Jesus, that recovery time is ridiculous.”
“Twenty,” he cackled. “Put me down. We need towels.”
He was steady on his feet, the cool air from the window helping, and when we were both covered, we made a dash for the bedroom.
Inside, he locked the door, pulled the towel off, and ordered me to get on my knees.
“You need to eat something and drink something,” I told him even as I realized how hard his cock was.
“No.” His heavy-lidded eyes were on me. “I want to watch you suck my dick.”
I went to my knees, because, really, whatever he wanted.
“Open your mouth,” he told me, grabbing his cock like he never did, sliding the leaking end across my closed lips.
It was hot, hearing him make demands, seeing the need in his eyes, feeling his fingers thread into my hair and then fist tight.
I opened and he slid in, pressing back so hard I almost gagged when he hit the back of my throat.
“I’m gonna fuck your mouth, and you better suck hard.”
Normally I held him, his hips, but he didn’t want that. He didn’t want me to have any power or control. He wanted only to make me do what he wanted.
My body was sated, but I felt the roll of desire go through me nonetheless. He was really getting off on it, watching me as he slammed his shaft into my mouth over and over.
“Malic,” he whispered. “I’m gonna come. I want you to drink it all down and lick me clean, you understand?”
I growled.
“Because then I’m gonna kiss you so hard, so long, ’cause I wanna taste myself on your tongue and know I had you, know you’re mine.”
The man annihilated me with his desire.
“Oh, baby, I fuckin’ love your mouth and your lips and your fuckin’ tongue.”
I hollowed out my cheeks, increasing the suction, and his head fell back as he came. It wasn’t much—he had just come in the bathroom—but I sucked hard and drank it down.
As he wanted, I licked him clean, his cock, his balls, and then rose over him, staring down into his eyes.
“Kiss me,” he whined, licking his lips.
I bent, scooped him up, and dumped him down onto the bed. He was staring up at me with sparkling eyes.
He sighed deeply, blissfully sated. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, baby,” I chuckled.
“I need food and water,” he almost giggled.
“I would agree.”
“Well, go get it.”
“Oh hell no,” I told him, walking over to the armoire to get my clothes. “Get your ass up, and let’s go downstairs and see your family.”
He grunted.
“Now.”
“I like you better when you’re not talking,” he teased. “When your mouth is full.”
“I will beat your ass if you do not get up.”
“Really?” He sounded so hopeful.
I had no one to blame but myself. I had created a monster.
I HAD tangled with a demon the night before, killed it the following afternoon, and then gone caroling with Dylan and his family that evening. I didn’t sing—it was not at all in my skill set—but I listened and watched and held Dylan’s hand as we walked.
I sat in the enormous Catholic church for midnight Mass, enjoyed watching Dylan get up and take communion and then get up again when the priest called for volunteers from the congregation to sing with the choir. He smiled at me sitting there with his family, and when we walked out, I had Dylan tucked under one arm and Tina under the other. We talked to a lot of people even though it was after one i
n the morning, and when we got home, we had a snack of sliced ham with spicy mustard on butter rolls and potato salad. It was nice, just us, just me and Dylan’s family in the kitchen talking and laughing.
The gossip was fun to listen to, and Tina brought up the one girl who had worn clear plastic four-inch heels to Mass.
I grunted.
“You saw her too, right?”
I coughed. “She was hard to miss.”
“Hooker heels, right?” Tina asked.
My smile was evil.
She smacked my bicep. “See, Mom, I told you. Debbie Riley is a whore.”
“Tina!”
“What?” Tina smacked me again. “Tell her.”
I turned to Lily. “You only wear those if you’re working the pole.”
“Malic!” Lily scolded.
“What?” I chuckled.
It was fun to watch Dylan’s mom give us all the evil eye.
“I didn’t say anything.” Dylan snickered, slurping his apple cider.
Afterward, everyone wandered off, and I went out to sit on the couch, close to the Christmas tree. Dylan’s father had made a fire when he came home, unconcerned that it would burn the house down in his sleep. Between the flickering flames, the glow of the twinkling multicolored lights, and the stockings hanging on the mantle, it was as close to perfect as it was going to get without—
“Can I lie down by you?”
I looked up and patted my knee. My boyfriend wanted to stretch out on the couch beside me with his head in my lap. I was utterly content.
When I started stroking his hair, he sighed deeply even as his eyes started to flutter.
“Don’t leave me here, ’kay? If you go up and I’m asleep, take me with you.”
“Of course.”
He got comfortable, turned his head, nuzzled my thigh gently, and then closed his eyes as I continued stroking his hair.
“Where did you go today with my dad before caroling? You guys ditched us for an hour and a half.”
