Max’s brows drew together. “What are you talking about?”
Rather than give myself away, I slipped into the crowd and away from the man who’d just raised my temperature to dizzying heights. Their voices faded into the usual hum of hell, and my nerves slowly settled. I wasn’t sure what to think about him. But for a moment, I’d made a friend—and for the first time since I fell, I felt the tiniest spark of intrigue.
Not for the games. Not for Lucy’s grand show.
But for him.
Max.
CHAPTER THREE
MAX
DearGod…er Lucy, these forms were insane.
I’d filled out tax returns, court documents—hell—even prenups for celebrities who barely knew each other’s middle names. But whatever sadistic pencil-pusher in Hell’s Human Resources had cooked these forms up needed to be publicly flogged with their own stapler.
The HR demon slid me a form titledConsent, Quotas, and Quality Assurance.
“Fill in prior experience,” she said.
I wrote:Attorney. Specialized in screwing opponents.
The man beside me snorted.
“Rebirth candidates get better apartments,” he murmured. “You aim for the top.”
I was aiming for whatever would give me my dick back.
The questions ranged from the standard—name, cause of death, next of kin (if you care)—to the ridiculous.How many orgasms have you delivered in your lifetime?Rate your oral stamina on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being tragic and 10 being divine.
I stared at the line like maybe, if I glared hard enough, the answer would magically come to me or write itself.
“Don’t lie,” Agnus snapped, leaning over my shoulder. “We check.”
I jumped. “You check?”
“Cross-referenced with your internet search history, ex-girlfriends, and the cries of despair echoing through the mortal plane.” She poked me in the chest with her clipboard, hard enough that I nearly toppled backward in the chair. “We just know if you are telling the truth or not. Give it your best guess.”
“God!”
“Wrong jurisdiction,” she shot back without missing a beat.
I rubbed at the sore spot and muttered, “Lady, you’re gonna leave a bruise.”
She arched one of her terrifying eyebrows that could have had its own zip code. “And?”
Right—demoness. I wisely shut up.
By the time she was finished ripping me a new one, I was praying for Ivy to reappear. Not that prayer got you very far here, but still. Ivy—sweet, strawberry-blonde Ivy—was the only thing in this whole pit that looked remotely like hope. I couldn’t imagine how she’d become a demoness.
I’d only been with her for about five minutes, but the girl was the perfect cocktail of innocence and simmering heat, like one of those angel-faced models you only saw in lingerie ads, only shorter.
I didn’t have much experience with classy ladies like her. No real girlfriends, just a rotating cast of “fuck buddies” who bailed as soon as the deed was done. So when Ivy had agreed to be my friend, it had rattled me.
I mean, Hell, I could handle. Loneliness? That was a different beast.
“Are you about finished here?” Agnus barked.
