“A dare,” I said, “with popcorn and bad effects. It’s tradition.”
The movie escalated. So did we. The first time our knees touched was an accident, a consequence of the couch being too short and Samiel needing to sprawl his legs out to avoid cutting off circulation to his demon-sized calves. The second time was on purpose, and I felt a spark when he didn’t flinch or apologize, just nudged back with a small, deliberate pressure. Our hands found each other again, and this time fingers laced, my thumb worrying the callused ridges on his. Every time something in the movie made me jump or cackle, the grip got tighter, like we were both waiting for a cue neither of us wanted to miss.
The movie wore on, my head full of buzz and static, eyes starting to water from both the relentless gore and the weird, low-key sweetness of sharing a couch with someone who didn’t judge me for reciting every single line ahead of the actors. Around the midpoint, I felt the gravity between us shift. Samiel was inching closer, slow and careful. His thigh pressed against mine, a solid, unmoving heat. I pretended not to notice, but my whole body was on high alert, every patch of skin waiting for the next contact.
At the climax, when Bruce Campbell finally chainsawed the monster and screamed in victory, Samiel whistled—a sharp, delighted sound that made me jump. I laughed, and he turned, eyes wide with joy. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe he was allowed to be here, watching movies and eating snacks with a woman who wasn’t afraid of him—or wasn’t yet. The next second, he caught himself, and looked away, as if he'd remembered he was supposed to be scary.
I broke the tension by heaving a throw pillow at his chest. “You ever see a movie before? Or is this a first-timer thing?”
He caught the pillow, squished it between his elbows, then shook his head. “Only old sitcoms and cooking shows. They said it was safer, less likely to make us… nostalgic.” As soon as he said the word, he grimaced, like he'd stepped on a truth he hadn’t intended to spill.
“God, you poor disaster,” I said, flopping back so my head landed in his lap. “You’ve been missing out. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man chainsaw his own hand off for the greater good.” I twisted to look up at him, my head pillowed on his thigh. “What else have they been keeping from you, Samiel? Do you even know about the cultural magic of Shark Week?”
He blinked. “I thought that was a military program?”
I howled and slapped his leg, the shock of muscle and heat making me linger a second. “You sweet, sweet idiot. We have so much to cover.” I grinned, feeling weirdly triumphant that I could actually teach a demon something. “Next up, reality TV. After that, memes.”
He looked down at me, a half-smile curling at his mouth. “I want to know it all. If you’re the teacher.”
I swallowed. “You’re really not going to get tired of me?”
He shook his head, all gravity. “Never.”
I wasn’t ready for the weight of that word, the way it fell into my chest like buckshot and scattered there. So I reached for the remote, changed the channel, and queued up a YouTube playlist called “Internet’s Dumbest Home Experiments.” I didn’t think about it—I just wanted him to see what happened when regular humans dared the laws of nature with nothing but a jug of Diet Coke and a dream.
Samiel’s eyes went comically wide as the first video started—a pair of sunburned idiots pouring Mentos into a two-liter, the resulting geyser arching into the neighbor’s lawn. Hehowled, a delighted sound that startled even me. The next clip—microwaving a can of soup until it detonated—had him doubled over. He watched in slack-jawed awe as the homepage cycled through every permutation of destruction: watermelons in blenders, slingshot-thrown bowling balls, the slow necrosis of an off-brand marshmallow left in a trunk through July.
For a moment, I forgot to overthink. Just watched the light hit him, the way his face animated with every new disaster. I wondered if all the demons in Hell’s Valley watched the world like this, hungry to understand the rules of a game they hadn’t been allowed to play in years.
After the fifth or sixth clip, Samiel just blurted it out. “Are humans always this… reckless?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We have a genetic compulsion to see how close we can get to death without making it official.” I shot him a sideways look. “You’re not going to tell me demons don’t have their own version of this, right? The ‘hold my beer’ impulse?”
He shook his head in awe. “But you tape it. And post it for others to… learn from?”
“Or just to laugh at. Cultural immortality. You either get famous or die trying.” I leaned into him, propping myself up on one elbow, unable to stop the smile that kept sneaking around the corners of my mouth. “What, is this not how you pictured your first forty-eight hours with a bride? Watching rednecks explode watermelons for science?”
Samiel’s hand came up, cupping the side of my face. “I never even dared to picture it,” he said, voice thick. “This is better.”
Before I could find a quip, he dipped his head and kissed me. Not the feral, devouring thing from last night, but a slow, hungry melt, lips parted just enough to trap the sound of my own gasp in the space between us. His hand slid into my hair, thumb tracingmy cheek as if to memorize the shape of me. I let myself fall into it.
I’d been kissed in plenty of ways—sloppy, efficient, bored, even sometimes desperate—but never with the kind of focus Samiel brought to the table. He kissed like he’d been dreaming of this specific moment for so long that he didn’t trust the world not to snatch it away. Like he was trying to remember every detail: the taste, the heat, the way my teeth scraped his lip when I bit at him just hard enough to make him hiss.
He angled his body, shifting under the weight of my head, then with a single motion he dragged me up and onto his lap, the movement so fluid that I barely registered the transition until I was straddling him, knees pressed to either side of his hips. The mesh of my shorts prickled against his thighs, and his hands bracketed my waist, not possessive but supportive, like he was holding something that might jump or shatter if he wasn’t careful.
We made out, open-mouthed and ferocious, his tongue hot and forked. My hands climbed to his hair and horns, loving the way he shivered when I gripped them. I wrapped my legs tighter around his hips, grinding down so the throb inside me matched the one I felt, heavy and thick, under his sweatpants.
Samiel wasn’t gentle, but he was careful, as if he’d studied the geometry of my body and calculated the exact amount of pressure it could take before bruising. He pulled me closer, one hand gripping the small of my back, the other snaking up my side to cup my breast through the mesh. His palm was rough, callused, but he moved slow, thumb tracing tight circles around my nipple until it peaked hard against the thin fabric. I moaned into his mouth, shameless, and felt his cock harden to full size beneath me—so solid I wondered if it might just tear clean through the seams of the pants if I moved too fast. I rocked forward, grinding along the length of him, and the pressure of itmade me gasp, made him bite down on the curve of my shoulder with a low groan.
With an effort, I pulled back, hands braced on his shoulders, my breath coming shallow and hard. “Sam,” I managed. “Fuck, I want you, but—” I shot a look at the clock on the far wall, numbers burning orange: 3:49 p.m. “If we don’t eat something now, you’re gonna have to carry me back after the Chase. I’ll pass out the minute you win.”
It was not a lie. I was already lightheaded, my muscles gone strange and floaty from too many hours of adrenaline and popcorn and him. But also, I didn’t want to lose the momentum. I leaned in, bridging the distance between our mouths, and nipped at his lower lip before whispering, “If you let me die of low blood sugar, I’m haunting you for the next four decades.”
Instead of laughing, Samiel went oddly serious. “You won’t,” he said, voice low. He adjusted me in his lap, as if the weight of me was nothing, then reached for his phone—which, I now noticed, was vintage enough to have actual buttons and a matte-black case battered by years of use.
“You want pizza?” he asked, thumbing the speed dial with a rapid, almost anxious dexterity. “Or is that too… basic for the last meal of the unclaimed?”
I gawked. “You’re kidding. There’s a pizza place here?”
