Reign turned and walked away, disappearing down the corridor.
Sensor lights came on and off and then Noah heard water running, the soothing sound of it doing little to calm his nerves. He was too spent to do much though, so he just lay where he was on Reign’s fluffy rug, meaning to gather his strength, but instead drifting off.
Noahcame to from a cramp in his arm. He was still on the rug where he’d been… not long ago judging by the twilight still present outside. His brain was still too fuzzed out by the sex to accommodate for higher functions, but he somehow managed to drag himself to the shower in Reign’s bathroom. As his cooled body started warming up again, he recounted what had happened, remembering bits and pieces he’d not noticed while he’d been drawing. Like Reign talking mostly to himself about Noah’s obsession with painting him.
Noah smiled to himself. Why did Reign have to be so perfect? Not just the sex, everything about him. Why did he have to make Noah breakfast, or take him out for dinner, or let Noah sleep in his bed and stay in his home? It was supposed to be just fucking, that had been their agreement from the start, so why did Noah keep wanting more and why did Reign keep giving it?
Noah stared at his goofy smile in the mirror while he dressed, and he carried it with him to the lounge, eager to find the demon.
The moment his feet touched the rug, he froze and that invading feeling of wrongness from earlier returned to him. Reign wasn’t in the living room where Noah had expected to find him, and neither had he been in his bedroom. Upstairs then?
The house was big, and it took Noah twenty minutes to check every room, to ascertain that Reign was, in fact, not here.Had he left?Without saying anything?Right after they’d had sex, too, if Noah had to pinpoint the likeliest time of when exactly.
A surge of fear speared through Noah at that possibility, unleashing anxiety in its wake. He went to get his phone, but his mind was already racing with questions. Had Reign finally grown tired of him? Was that what was happening?
Noah texted the demon, but his messages weren’t getting through just like his attempted call. His anxiety grew. Reign had been a little…offsince that day at the Foreign Affairs’ office when they’d set up the fake data servers, thoughtful, distracted… Was that why? It had been so good, not just the fucking, but everything, so it made no sense for Reign to be pushing him away now and so abruptly.
Right? At least, not without a reason.
Noah’s chest felt tight. Needles prickled his skin, overwhelming all his nerve endings.Was it time for Reign to move on? Was Noah’s soul ready for collection?
Frantic, Noah unbuttoned his pants, checking on the sigil marring the inside of his thigh.Still there.And still the same faded gray, a sign that Noah’s time was yet to come.
Letting out a deep exhale, Noah sat down at the dining table and held his head in his hands. What was happening? He knew something was changing, Reign’s reaction in the middle of sex, his demeanor, so unlike anything Noah knew about the demon.
“Fuck!”
He knew solittle.He’d not dared ask Reign for details about the contract, not wanting to remind the demon he was yet to wish for something in return.Because there was a chance that would keep Reign chained to him.Noah had no proof that was the case, no way to find out, but he’d assumed so. After all, why else would Reign stick around for a decade? He wanted Noah’s soul, but Noah simplydidn’t know what he wanted in exchange for it, back then and now…
That wasn’t true anymore, though, was it? Hadn’t been for a while despite his best efforts to prevent it. Therewassomething Noah wanted. Craved more than he craved his freedom from the Empire. Needed as much as he needed to paint.
Reign. A demon, a man, that Noah couldn’t have because the rules of Hell did not allow for it.
Even after an hour had passed since Noah sat down, Reign didn’t return. No matter what logical reasoning Noah explored, or how many more texts he sent, the fear in the pit of his stomach didn’t go away, the foreboding feeling didn’t retreat. He forced himself to return to the painting, but even that didn’t grant him more than an hour of distraction, his body stuck in a flight or fight mode no matter what he tried.
Nothing made sense.
By the time it was two in the morning, Noah was too antsy, too exhausted from thinking and pacing and wondering what he’d done wrong. He went to Reign’s room, but the empty bed only made his ribcage feel like it was squishing his lungs, so he knew he couldn’t sleep in it. Tonight, for the first time ever, he went to his own bed in the guest room of Reign’s residence, disrupting the perfectly tucked-in brown cover as he slipped under it and felt colder than he’d ever had.
28
Noah jerked awake, sitting up in bed disoriented and scared. He didn’t know what had pulled him from sleep and then Reign barged into the room, naked and heaving, and he just didn’t care anymore. The demon was soaked, water still dripping from his mahogany hair, but he didn’t seem bothered, his attention solely focused on Noah.
“Reign?” Noah said, leaning more comfortably against the headboard now that he knew he wasn’t in any real danger. “Where were you?”
Reign didn’t respond. He simply walked over to the bed, propping one knee on it and then the other. The mattress dipped under his weight as he crawled forward like a cat stalking its prey, a flicker of something pained but mesmerizing shimmering in his haunted gaze.
“Noah,” he said when he straddled Noah and braced both his arms on Noah’s sides. “You are yet to tell me what you most want.” His voice was demanding, a note of authority lurking there in the gentleness of it making him seem even more troubled.
Noah swallowed, his stomach sinking as that foreboding feeling from earlier returned full force.Somethingwas wrong. With him, with Reign. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but it slithered down his spine and through his insides, sending his body into a state of high alert. He was going to lie here, hehadto, because what he wanted, he couldn’t have. A demon couldn’t give it, no matter how much he wished for it.
“I…” Noah averted his gaze, unable to look at Reign. His heart rate elevated. “I don’t know. I’m still thinking.”
A finger hooked under his chin and forced him to face Reign again. The disappointment, the aversion Noah expected wasn’t what he saw in those soul-stealing eyes, but he also didn’t have time to decipher why they looked even more irresistible than usual, not when the dull twinge in his inner thigh flared to scorching-hot agony. Pain worse than he’d ever experienced rippled through him, and his body convulsed as his lungs pumped for air. He thrashed, twisting and jerking and knocking the covers and pillows off the bed. Reign pinned him down, one hand pressing on Noah’s chest and the other one on his leg, right where the burning stemmed from. It only made it worse, intensified it, wheezes and screams now coming out of him as he fought to get free.
“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!”
Despite Noah’s pleas, Reign didn’t let off, keeping him restricted on the bed as he tossed and flailed and clawed and lost his mind. For hours, or maybe for days, Noah just hurt, his insides tearing and his bones breaking. He couldn’t breathe, could think, didn’t know if he still even existed, his world narrowed down to the excruciating onslaught of pain in every cell of his body until it all dulled down eventually, back to that pressure he’d been feeling in his leg since he’d agreed to make a deal with a demon.
