Page 22 of Obey

Because then, Devil might have left my room without any personal confrontations.

Instead, I was standing in front of him in nothing but my bra and panties. I’d attracted his attention, and now I was almost inevitably going to pay the price for it.

Well, as long as I was already in trouble, I thought, I might as well get some answers.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped. “This is my bathroom, Devil, not yours.”

His grin just grew. “Actually, baby, I own the house, which means they’re all my bathrooms. None of them belong to you.”

I felt my jaw clench at the endearment. I’d always hated it when he called me that, mostly because he somehow managed to make it sound condescending rather than endearing. He made it sound like... possession.

“Common manners says that when someone is staying in your house, the bathroom you give them is theirs for the time being,” I said quietly. “Why are you looking through my stuff?”

“Looking to see whether you actually have any lady stuff in here,” he said with a shrug.

I tipped my head, trying to figure out what he meant by ‘lady stuff’ and whether I should or should not have it, but he spoke again before I could come up with anything.

“There’s nothing like that in here,” he noted. “And that means you’ve been lying to me about having your period. Either that or you’re done.”

My throat clenched at that, and I cursed myself for being all sorts of stupid. I’d told him I was on my period and couldn’t sleep with him because of it.

And then I hadn’t done any of the legwork to make sure that story held up under scrutiny.

I’d gotten sloppy. Forgotten how much work it took to lie to Devil and make it believable. Probably because I’d never had to do anything like that with Knight, and the training I’d built up over years with Devil had slipped away when I didn’t need it.

Shit.

Now there was nothing for it but to tell him the truth. Or at least a version of it.

“You’re right,” I said quietly. “It ended earlier than I expected.”

At that, he outright smiled, and while a smile would have been an attractive, friendly expression on anyone else, Devil’s smiles had always made my blood run cold.

They meant he was happy. And his happiness almost always depended on someone else being in danger.

“Perfect,” he trilled. “In that case, you’ll have dinner next to me tonight, and after that...” The smile slipped, replaced by a look of pure lust on his face. “After that, I’m going to remind you how much you love to ride me. How much you like it deep and hard. How much you like to scream.”

The last word was a hiss, all menace and threat and lust, and my stomach flipped.

Yes, I remembered how it felt to sleep with him. I remembered how much he liked to force himself on me when I wasn’t ready, and how hard he liked to get.

I had very clear memories of how much he liked to make me scream.

But letting him know that I was scared—or remembering having been scared—would only make it worse. So instead, I slapped a smile on my face and cocked a hip, trying to look alluring and willing.

“That might work,” I said. “If you include the stuff we used to do when we first met.”

He looked confused for a moment, but then his brow cleared. “The knives?” he asked.

My stomach clenched at the thought—at the danger—but I nodded. “You know what it does to me.”

His expression became even more insane. He looked like a kid who’d just been told he could have the one thing his parents had never let him have before.

It was disgusting.

“I didn’t think you liked that anymore,” he muttered, his hands clenching into fists.

I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”