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He grins—a terrifying, feral thing—and starts to move.

Wet, slick sounds of skin slapping against skin echo through the room as he pounds into me.

“Three weeks,” he grits out, his face twisted in pleasure. “Three weeks of silence.”

He snaps his hips, grinding the piercing against my g-spot.

“Do you have any idea?” he growls, driving deeper, harder, trying to fuse his skeleton to mine. “I was starving for you. I was ready to tear the soul out of anyone who looked at me the wrong way.”

He leans down, pressing his lips to mine in a searing kiss.

“I’m never leaving your side again,” he pants against my skin, the words tearing out of his throat between strokes. “I’m staying right here. Buried in you. Mine.”

A guttural groan rumbles out of him as he thrusts one last, ruinous time, spilling deep inside me as my pussy clenches around his length.

The tension drains out of him and he drops like a controlled demolition, his dead weight pinning me into the cheap fibers of the rug. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply.

“You smell like peaches,” he murmurs into my skin.

A small, disbelief-laden laugh bubbles up in my chest as I stare up at the ceiling, my fingers idly stroking the sweat-damp hair at the nape of my demon’s neck.

I run the mental tape back, just to make sure I haven’t finally snapped. The botched summoning ritual with the mass-produced spell kit. The terrifying reality of accidentally dragging something ancient into my one-bedroom apartment just because I couldn’t handle the silence.

And now I’m lying on the floor with Malachi, a literal entity of the Pit, using me as a mattress. In my bedroom, there’s a Hellhound in the shape of a Great Dane, and Vesper’s gained at least five pounds from what I can only assume is from weeks of being spoiled with flank.

I wanted a ghost. I wanted a flicker. Instead, I got an ancient demon who likes the way my shampoo smells and a household that defies every law of physics and theology.

Fucking bargaining.

Epilogue

MALACHI - SIX MONTHS LATER

Lying little mortal.

They’re a little crooked in the front—crowded together like tenants in a cheap apartment building—and there’s a silver filling on the back molar that looks like it was installed with a trowel. But the she’s hoarding assets.

She has all four wisdom teeth.

Two are barely visible, shyly poking through the pink gums like shy mushrooms, but the top two are there in all their crowning, pearlescent glory.

I should wrench them out of her face right now. It would be a practical, fiscal decision.

Except she’s currently sleeping beside me in a warm, chaotic tangle of limbs and cheap cotton. The House-Beast is acting as a sentient, furry paperweight on her ankles, purring with the force of a diesel engine, and Chain-Chewer’s sprawled on the floor, twitching in his sleep, chasing dream-mailmen.

It is disgusting. It is domestic. I hate it. I love it.

I lean back in, unable to help myself, and use my thumb to hook her bottom lip, tugging it down to get one more look at the hidden contraband.

She stirs, grumbling against my thumb. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks before she finally blinks. Her hazel gaze is unfocused, heavy with the fog of dreams. She looks up, pupils slowly contracting as she realizes I’m looming over her jaw like a vulture inspecting a particularly interesting carcass.

“What...” she croaks, her voice thick with sleep and confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Inventory,” I say flatly. “You have thirty-two teeth, Eden.”

She blinks again, her brain trying to process the fact through the haze of REM sleep. “You were... counting my teeth?”

I flick her nose. Hard.