Her laugh is silk and sunlight, and I kiss her before I can stop myself—hard, hungry, grateful.
The couch doesn’t survive us.
She ends up straddling me, curls draping down like dark ribbons across my shoulders, her lips swollen, her breath shaking every time my hands slide beneath her shirt. The bond cracklesbetween us, eager, pulsing, begging us to keep going—so we do.
And I’ve never been more thankful for a fucking shirt. I slide her underwear to the side, and Piper frantically works at my sweats. In seconds I’m inside her again, and Piper is riding me with an agonizing pace.
Slowly, deeply, until she’s trembling and I’m groaning her name into her throat. She works her hips, and I nip at her neck, sliding a hand up to claim her throat. I give it a gentle squeeze, arcing my hips up to meet her thrusts, and she cries out when the orgasm hits. It doesn’t take me long to follow.
Lunch happens sometime after.Barely. We eat on the floor with Newt curled smugly between us, purring like he invented intimacy.
The afternoon drifts around us in quiet contentment.
Piper curls against my side on the couch, tracing the lines of my chest with lazy fingers that makemy thoughts scatter like sparks from fire. She plays with the hem of my shirt, and I play with her hair. Neither of us says much because we don’t need to.
The bond fills all the empty spaces with warmth and truth and a kind of peace I didn’t think existed for demons like me.
I kiss her again before dinner. And during dinner. And after dinner.
By the time I carry her to bed, she’s breathless and flushed, laughing against my throat as if her heart never learned what fear felt like.
And when she slides her hands into my hair and pulls me down to her, whispering my name with the kind of want that makes my entire body bow toward her—I know with absolute certainty.
I could spend a thousand lifetimes like this. Touching her... Feeding her... Holding her... Loving her...
Over and over. As many times as she’ll let me.
Because the bond is no longer a tether. It’s apromise.
And I intend to honor every breath of it.
Chapter 27
Piper
The shop smells like winter and possibility. Cinnamon bark simmering in the cauldron-shaped diffuser. Orange peel drying on the racks. Juniper sprigs tucked inside tiny glass bottles that catch the sunlight in jeweledflashes.
Two days before Christmas Eve, the place always hums with magic and human excitement in equal measure. Today, though? The air feels warmer. Softer. Threaded with something I recognize now without thinking—Slade’s presence.
He moves through my shop like he was always meant to be part of it—setting out trays of enchanted soaps, straightening bundles of protective sachets, tying ribbons around herb packets using a skill that makes customers stare at his hands more than they should.
He doesn’t seem to notice their stares. But I do. So does the bond—quiet but pleased, warm as a candle flame flickering between our ribs.
When the morning crowd thickens, he steps easily beside me, handing me bags, answering questions, lifting boxes, and murmuring calm instructions that make my pulse skip. We work in tandem, like a practiced duo instead of a witch and a demon lord learning how to be something together. Every time our hands brush, a subtlespark sweeps up my spine, warm and intimate, like the universe nudging us together just a little more.
By noon, the shop is full of familiar faces—locals who’ve been coming toBellamy’s Hearth & Homesince my grandmother ran it.
Mrs. Hanley points openly at Slade as she leans across the counter. “And who is that tall drink of trouble?”
I flush. “He’s… helping.”
“Helping?” She squints at me over her glasses. “His helping looks a lot like hovering.”
She waves her cane toward him. “You! Tall one!”
Slade turns with the patience of a saint—or a very determined predator. “Yes, ma’am?”
Mrs. Hanley studies him like a hawk assessing a shiny new offering. “Are you kind to our Piper?”
