Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

Chapter 24

He fucks me unmercifully. For hours. Or what feels like hours in my alcohol-induced daze. Each moment feels broken, each movement disjointed, and I know I’m passing out, graying into unconsciousness, only to be pulled back by his unrelenting fucking.

The bed spins. His cock pounds into me. Whatever’s down there licks me. I lose track of what’s happening. Of who and where I am.

When he turns me over to take me from behind, I bury my face in the pillow and plead with the fuzzy darkness that keeps trying to suck me down to keep me.

Eventually, it does.

I wake to a pounding hangover, and an empty bed.

Sitting up makes my head and stomach whirl, and I squint against the Sunday morning light shafting through my curtains. Why does the light on Sundays feel sharper, more judgmental, than any other day of the week?

Jou? I clutch at my throbbing temples. The room stinks of sex, and the smoky smell of his skin.

Yeah?

Where are you?

In the basement.

What’s he doing in the basement? There’s nothing down there but the washer-dryer and the oil tank.

Is everything okay?

Yeah.

I can’t tell anything from his response. But the idea of him being down my basement makes me nervous, even through the hangover. I begin getting out of bed, ungluing myself from the sheets. My thighs are smeared with sticky red goo. It doesn’t look quite like come or quite like blood or quite like anything I’ve seen before. I put a hand down to push myself up and more of the goo squishes between my fingers.

What the hell is all over the bed?

His liquid chocolate chuckle, warm and soothing through my aching head. I’da cleaned up but I didn’t want to wake you. Take a shower, you’ll feel better.

Is this? It dawns on me what it is. What it must be. Eww. This is your . . . stuff, isn’t it?

My stuff? That’s poetic. Demon seed. Hellspore. The Burning Grain. I’ve heard it called all kinda things, but never my stuff before.

Don’t make fun of me. My head hurts too much. I grind the fingertips of my ungoo-ed hand into my eyes. I thought you didn’t come. That it gave you amnesia.

It does.

Do you— I begin hesitantly. Do you know who I am?

If he doesn’t, do I really want to know? Maybe that’s what he’s doing in the basement. Trying to get back home. In which case, shouldn’t I just leave him to it?

Yeah, I know who you are. It only lasts an hour or two. You slept through it.

And the reason he was so insistent on getting me drunk last night finally dawns in my throbbing, foggy brain. He wanted me unconscious while he was vulnerable.

Oh. I manage to extricate myself from the bed. Standing makes my stomach protest. Makes me feel delicate and shaky in a very bad way. I don’t think I’m up to a shower yet.

Hair of the dog’s in the kitchen.

I don’t understand what he means, but a good, familiar smell is beginning to penetrate my hangover. Coffee. Everything will be okay after some coffee. And maybe a healing potion or two. I draw on my robe and moose slippers and make my way downstairs, clinging to the banister. I need the support. I ache all over, like I’ve been hit by a bus, and my knees feel so shaky I’m not sure I could walk far on my own. Did I really have that much to drink?

A full breakfast – scrambled eggs and a toasted bagel spread with cream cheese and lox and a pile of deeply browned sausage links – sits beside a steaming cup of coffee on the kitchen table. There’s a tall glass of tomato juice next to the coffee, with the fluffy top of a celery stick sticking out of the drink.

I pick it up and take a tentative sip. Did you make me a Bloody Mary?

Uh-huh. Nothin’ better for a hangover. That’s what Martha says anyway.

I sink into my chair, ignoring the aches and pains and the horrible stickiness between my thighs.

You made this all for me?

Yeah. Now stop distracting me. I gotta concentrate.

I stop, and eat, and brush away the tears that slide down my cheeks before they drip into the wonderful food he’s made me.

His heavy tread on the stairs startles me. I drop my coffee cup into the suds, retrieve it hastily and rinse it under a stream of cold water. Placing it into the draining rack, I turn to face the basement door as it opens.

He steps into the light, and carefully closes the door behind him. He looks different. Tired. His shoulders are slumped. His dreadlocks shade his face, but I can see lines of strain around his mouth. Maybe coming is bad for demons? Maybe it hurt him somehow?

He crosses the kitchen without comment and places Izzy on top of the ‘fridge. The salamander immediately curls into a ball and begins licking its tail.

“Jou, are you okay?”

“Yeah. There any coffee left?”

“No, but I can make another pot.” I glance from him to the salamander, who is making small, piteous noises. “What’s wrong with Izzy?”

“I needed blood for what I was doin’,” he says. At the salamander he growls, “Stop whining.”

“He’s hurt?” I approach the salamander and hold my hands out. Izzy jumps down into my hands and huddles there, wrapping his tail tightly around his barrel-shaped body. Tucking him into the curve of my arm, I carefully pull the end of his tail free and examine the long wound that runs down the length of it.

“Don’t waste that mouth on him,” the demon growls. Behind me, he yanks the coffee pot out of its holder and begins to fill it with cold water.

“I wasn’t going to.” I press my finger against the lizard’s tail to stop the bleeding as I carry him into my herbarium and sort through my healing potions. The one I did for Hisaka shifters before the clans declared Mass. General a safe harbor should