He seemed just as helpless as her. Just as greedy for it, just as eager for more. He even took her hand, after a moment of hercoming hard against him and kissing him hotly, and urged it down. Like he wanted her to touch him, too. “Ohhhh, please, baby,” she thought she heard him say, and honestly nothing had ever sounded so hot to her in her whole life.
There was no way she wasn’t going to oblige.
In fact, for a second, all she could think about was doing it. Touching him, stroking him, maybe even taking him in her mouth. Right here, in the drive-in, still surrounded by people. Though by that point she knew she’d do it anywhere for him. He could have her on her knees on Main Street.
She even went to say it to him.
You want my mouth, she imagined herself suggesting.
But just as she did, he pulled away.
In fact, he pulled away so abruptly she actually heard metal shriek. As if he’d gone for the door, but done it so violently that he’d yanked it off its hinges. Or worse—god, it sounded worse. Another noise followed it, almost like a tearing or a crumpling. She didn’t know. All she knew was that it hit so hard she clapped her hands over her ears. She scrunched her eyes tight shut.
Then the whole car seemed to lurch, and she couldn’t help it.
She screamed.Jack, I’m sorry, she tried to gasp. Though she wasn’t quite sure why. This couldn’t possibly be the result of him storming off again. It was like briefly being in the middle of a hurricane. By the time it died down, she felt genuinely afraid to open her eyes, in case opening her eyes revealed the car was now jammed into the nearest tree. She had to look through her fingers first.
But she didn’t see anything that made any sense. All she got was what looked like a ton of red. Red everywhere. A huge wall of it, as if Jack had somehow been crushed to death by an enormous truck, and she was now staring at his pulped remains. All of which was absolutely terrifying for a good long moment.
Before she registered all the ways this didn’t fit.
The red was all wrong, for starters.
It wasn’t dark in the low light. It was bright, almost vermilion, the kind of color you’d see on a newly minted stop sign. Only that description didn’t really do it justice, either. Somehow it had a glow about it—like something lit with an odd inner light. And it looked so smooth and plump it could have passed for ripe fruit. She could almost imagine sinking her teeth in, it was that juicy looking.
None of which made sense.
But it made a little more when she let one hand slip from her face.
Because she was in fact looking at something eminently bitable. The kind of thing you’d chomp on in the middle of sex. A bicep, it seemed like. An enormous, bare bicep—incredibly human looking, except for the color and the size. In fact it was so big it barely fit in the space between them. Itdidn’tfit, she realized, after a moment of letting her dazed eyes wander.
The seat beside her had given way to make room for it.
It had given way to make room for a lot of things, truth be told. Now she could see a shoulder, so boulder-like in appearance it had somehow dented the ceiling of the car. And the dashboard appeared to have crumpled, to accommodate a huge knee and thigh and lower leg. Whatever foot this thing had, it was most likely punching through the bumper. She pictured it emerging between the headlights, as big as a hubcap. Bare, obviously, because most of the rest of this body was.
The only clothes she glimpsed were almost rags.
A slip of material over one thigh, half a belt, a strip of plaid hanging down over one gargantuan pectoral muscle. At which point, of course, it hit her. She knew before she whipped a look at the place where a face had to be, and the face was wild and terrifying and impossible, but at the same time oh so familiar.
She would know it anywhere now.
Even with the extra squareness to the jaw, and the heaviness to the brow, even with the size difference, the dark hair, the frickinghorns, she would have always known. Both because it was Jack, clearly her Jack.
And because of one other simple thing.
The thing that came to her just as he clearly went to calm her down. Or try to explain. Because, really, he didn’t need to. “Oh mygod,” she gasped the moment it sank in what he was. Not a man, not anything ordinary, but an honest-to-goddemon. Her Jack was a demon. Even though demons shouldn’t exist, even though she had always thought she had hallucinated things like that, even though she’d pushed it down alongside all those witchy feelings and memories, he was. And now it all clicked into place. “I cannotbelievehow much sense this somehow makes.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She knew it was going to take a lot to get him out of the car so they could get home somehow. Mostly because he’d jammed his horns and his huge legs so tightly into the metal he could barely move. But also there was the fact that getting him out was going to require putting her hands on him. And now putting her hands on him wasn’t just terrifying in a being-too-affectionate sort of way.
It was also kind of terrifying in the horror-movie way.
Because sure, it was still Jack. Yes, him being some kind of giant demonic being explained a hell of a lot. But even with all that in mind, she was still having to touch a giant obsidian horn so she could prize it from a car roof. And that was kind of a lot to deal with, even for someone who was pretty used to weird things happening. And who had already suspected that Jack wasn’t quite normal. And who was currently experiencing him trying to apologize profusely for the inconvenience.
“I know I should have told you,” he was saying, as she reached for that gleaming black curve. Gingerly, awkwardly—first one way, and then backing off, and then trying another. Before finally, finally, she dared to touch, and oh holy wow, that thing washot. Wildly hot. She snapped her hand back, thinking of burns, being scalded, getting melted down to the bone.
Though she could see immediately that it hadn’t hurt her. Ithad just been a shock. Like touching something you didn’t realize had been out in the sun on a day that hadn’t seemed too sunny.
