Page 13 of Devil

My lips parted to answer. Of course that was what I was telling him—of course I was saying no.

But the answer wouldn’t come.

It was the oddly perilous feeling of his hips against mine. It was that mouth, still wet from kissing my neck. It was the way his eyes roved over my face, like he had to make sure I was still right in front of him.

Victory flashed in his eyes. “I see,” he said softly.

I shook my head as quickly as I could with his hand there. “We can’t,” I said again. Hoping that would be enough.

“Tell me no.”

I couldn’t. And even now I can’t say if it was because of the churning want inside me or because saying no to Bell felt impossible. He was so much, a demigod, and how could a mortal say no? To his charm and that unearthly determination beneath it?

He pulled his lower lip briefly between his teeth, not taking his eyes from mine. Assessing. “Say yes.” He spoke it like a dare. “If you won’t say no, then say yes.”

I shook my head again. “I could get fired. And it isn’t seemly.”And if you kiss me and then forget about it later—or worse, laugh about it—I don’t know if I can endure it.

“Seemly? No, I wouldn’t want it to be.” His voice grew low. “I don’t think seemly thoughts about you. I have no seemly plans. Everything I want from you is unwholesome and obscene.”

I just stared at him, mouth open, heart pounding. He was so handsome, and this moment couldn’t be real, and the entire world was a lie if it were real. Friendly Bell. Warm, popular, courteous Bell. Bell who helped his classmates and volunteered at the coat closet and held wayward kittens in his shirt for an entire class and petted them to sleep.

He wanted unwholesome things from me.

“I was wrong about you,” I said. The words were barely audible, but he heard them.

A dimple flashed. “What were you wrong about?”

“I thought you were…good.”

Another laugh like the music of heaven. “Tell me no, Birdie. Because if you don’t, I’m going to kiss you anyway.”

“You—that’s not—you can’t do that. It’s not right.”

The hand in my hair pulled tight. “I don’t care,” he said, and the honesty was so plain in his voice that it sent a chill down my spine. He really didn’t care. He couldn’t be made to care. He leaned close. “I only want you. No matter the cost. And if you don’t say no…”

“I have to say yes for you to kiss me. Those are the rules,” I said desperately, and he snorted, pressing his face into the side of mine.

“And what would you know of the rules, pretty bird?” he asked kindly.

Nothing. I knew only what I’d been told, the theory as taught by a church that broke its own rules so often that no one expected differently anymore. But I’d been told I was supposed to enthusiastically consent. That was a rule. And now Bell was breaking it as his mouth moved on my jaw over to mine.

“I think,” he murmured, “that you should let me kiss you and then decide. How will you know you like kissing me if you haven’t done it? And I’ll kiss you so good, I promise. I’ll make those pretty eyes water. I’ll make those pretty nipples hard.”

His last statement was staggering in how lurid it sounded to me, and it didn’t even matter because he moved a hand to my chest at the same time as he said it and squeezed. It was the first time I’d ever been squeezed there, and the blazing pleasure flaring against his hand and between my legs drove the breath from my lungs. I arched helplessly against him, and when he squeezed again, I moaned.

How did anyone endure a feeling like this? And when it was given by someone who looked like him?

“I know,” he said. “I know, baby. Tell me no. Say it, Birdie, because I’m not going to wait any longer.”

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t say yes and I couldn’t say no…and at least Evechoseher fate in Eden. She may have been tricked, beguiled, plied, but she still reached for the fruit herself. She still ate it willingly.

In the end, I merely moaned when it was brought to my lips—and then opened my mouth anyway.

6

BIRDIE