“I’m not a‘sentinel,’as they call themselves. I’m on the fringes of that group, really. Talon called me in to help with you because he thought I was distant enough from the humans that I wouldn’t care if they were mad at me for torturing one of their paladin friends. But then the paladin friend turned out to be you.”
“Me? Why does that matter? What made me different?”
Shadrach huffed out a laugh. “I wasn’t sure at first. You know, a few months ago, Ira told me that I would find a human the way the others found theirs. That Talon and I would come to blows for the very first time overmyhuman.”
“Your human?” Isaac repeated blankly.
Shadrach nodded. “You see, the demons at the Rink are all different than they once were. The moment they met their human, they were irrevocably altered. Their human was all they could see. All they could think about. All they wanted. I found the concept ridiculous. How could one human turn me inside-out like that? I’m over a thousand years old. I’ve seen regimes rise and fall—had a hand in many, in fact. I’ve bedded humans of every race, gender, and creed. The idea that meetingonewould change me so deeply was laughable. Human lives were blips in time, and they were all meaningless to me.”
Isaac scowled. Where was this going?
“But then I met you. One look at you, and I wanted you. One whiff of your scent and I was ensnared. One taste of your blood and I was changed. You’ve got a feral spirit and a lust for violence, and that’s how I know you were made to be mine. When Ira told me I would find a human, I tried to imagine myself with someone like the Sentinels. The do-gooders. But you, you’ve got shadows in your soul, and I’ve always preferred the dark.”
Isaac tried to shrink away, but Shadrach wouldn’t let him, winding an arm around his back and bringing their bodies flush. “Because I was born wrong?”
“Is that what they tell you? No, no, killer. You were born just as you were meant to be. A natural predator. My perfect match.” He leaned in, his nose and lips grazing Isaac’s but not quite firmly enough to be considered a kiss. “The others think I’m here to find out what you’re going to tell the guild, but the truth is I don’t care.”
“You don’t?” Isaac went cross-eyed trying to see him, and Shadrach raised his head with a smile.
“No. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you choose, I’m here. I’ll visit your dreams if that’s the only way to touch you. I’ll watch you from afar to make sure you’re safe. If you don’t want me, if this is all I’ll ever have of you, it’ll drive me crazy but so be it. Anything is better than nothing. You’re all that matters to me.”
Isaac could barely believe what he was hearing. “The guild will never accept that. If they find out about you, we’re both dead.”
“Who says they have to know? You can’t be punished for what happens in your dreams, can you?”
His eyes fell, and Shadrach didn’t miss it.
“Oh, killer, for fuck’s sake. They’ve punished you fordreamingwrong?”
The demon he’d eviscerated was gone now, as was the knife and blood on his hands, but he looked in the direction it had been. “When I was a teenager, they told me to keep a dream log. I wrote down all my dreams. Ones where I killed demons like that, slow and fun. Ones where I killed my roommate, who was an asshole that liked to make fun of me. Anything they deemed too dark was punished. They thought they could reroute my brain.”
“Not just idiots but cruel idiots,” Shadrach drawled. “Good to know.”
“They’re not?—”
“They are, and don’t you fucking defend them to me.” His fingers wound tight under Isaac’s jaw, and his breath went shallow. This close, Shadrach heard it, and it drew a wicked grin to his face. “Do you like this? Do you like when I take control?”
Isaac closed his eyes. He did, and he hated that Shadrach could read him so well. He needed to put a stop to this. Casting about for something else to say, he asked, “What if I don’t want this? What if I don’t want to be yours?”
“Then push me away, killer,” Shadrach purred. “This is your dream. Send me away. Stab me in the heart and tell me you never want to see me again.”
Shadrach backed him up, until a headstone pressed against the back of his legs. His arm was like a steel band around Isaac’s back, pinning their bodies together, and the brush of his fingers against the soft skin of Isaac’s throat was mesmerizing. He should pull away, but Shadrach’s warmth was far too inviting to lean into. His hands gripped Shadrach’s shirt tightly while he tried to screw up the courage to push him away.
“You don’t want to push me away because you feel it, too,” Shadrach whispered. “You want me as much as I want you.”
“It’s wrong.” Then why was he pressing closer, burying hisface in Shadrach’s neck? Shadrach allowed it, his hand moving from the front of Isaac’s neck to the back, holding him close.
“No, it’s not. Ira’s seen this, killer. It was prophesied. We’re meant to be.”
A part of him wanted it to be true. A part of him was afraid of what it would mean. If he was made for a demon, then did that mean he’d been doomed from the very start? Was his soul already forfeit?
“Don’t turn me away,” Shadrach whispered, ducking his head to breathe the words against Isaac’s lips. “I’ll be so good to you.”
Isaac groaned, threading his fingers into the smooth strands on the back of Shadrach’s head.
“Kiss me,” Shadrach said, “and fuck everything else.”
He’d like that more than anything. An alarm still blared in his head that this waswrong-wrong-wrong, but nothing felt more right than the moment their lips touched. A subvocal rumble growled out of Shadrach, vibrating against Isaac’s sternum.
