way out of this with all your demon powers—” I gestured wildly at him “—then maybe you should just suck it up and actually play your part and allow me a life instead of isolated captivity!”
His skin was aflame. As if underneath, his blood was lava, the surface cracked in some places and revealed a molten core of white-hot rage. My eyes widened involuntarily, my pulse stuttering. I’d have taken a step back—finally—if my muscles hadn’t been locked in some kind of fear-induced paralysis.
“You,” he snarled, his beautiful features contorted in fury, turning him into a vision of angelic vengeance, “are the one who ruined this.”
Was it suicidal that overlaying the terror pounding through my blood was the insane urge to reach out and touch his lips? Taste his skin again? I might burn myself, but I suddenly had a complete and utter understanding of the moth that gleefully dove into crackling flame.
Absent-mindedly, I licked my lips. His eyes dropped to my mouth. His nostrils flared, the cracks in his skin burning brighter.
“You had plenty of opportunity to avoid this mess,” he said, his voice reminiscent of the dark smoke forming his shadow wings. “And I certainly gave you enough chances to do so. You could have married any of the men who pursued you, and if you’d stayed married until past your 25th birthday, the contract would have been null and void.”
Like a bucket of ice water, his words shocked me out of the weird mix of fear and lust. My thoughts stumbled over each other, my brain drawing the connections faster than I could keep up.
Six proposals. That was the tally I’d racked up. At the tender age of twenty-five, when most women were maybe getting close to receiving their first proposal of marriage—if any at all—I’d had six of my former boyfriends ask me to marry them over the years.
It had started with the first guy I’d dated seriously at seventeen. At just a year older than me, he was heading off to college when we’d been together for six months, and he popped the question before he left.
Needless to say, that was the end of that relationship.
The next guy I went out with, once I was in college myself, asked me after four months of dating. I ran as if my ass were on fire.
After that, the proposals came even faster. The last man I dared to go out with, just a few months ago, went down on one knee and presented me with a ring on our third date. The result was me having a panic attack and him desperately waving at me as I sped away in the ride I called.
If there was one thing that made me run for the hills in a relationship, it was the prospect of marriage.
Dumbfounded, I stared at the smoldering demon in front of me. “That was you, wasn’t it?” I whispered. “You forced them to propose.”
“Force.” He scoffed and curled his lip. “Demons can’t make humans do their bidding. All I did was put a suggestion in their minds, and they did the rest.”
“You manipulated them!”
My head roared with the rush of blood. All this time, I’d thought my exes were crazy, infatuated, obsessed, I’d thought there was something wrong with me for attracting creeps who were obnoxiously clingy. And all this time, they’d been perfectly fine until a demon messed with their minds—because of me.
“Damn right I did.” He glowered at me. “And if you’d just taken one of them up on the offer, we wouldn’t be in this predicament, would we?”
Oh, so it was all my fault? Hell fucking no. “You could have just told me! Why didn’t you come to remind me of the contract sooner? If I’d known I needed to get married, I’d have gotten hitched all right!”
I would have annulled that sucker right after turning twenty-five, of course. No way I’d have stayed married. I suppressed a shudder.
“I wasn’t allowed to interfere with your decision,” the demon snapped, his teeth gleaming in the flickering light of the torches. Was I hallucinating, or had his canines sharpened?
“Oh, but you could manipulate everyone around me?”
“Only the subject of the covenant is off limits.”
The covenant. That fucking, arcane, life-destroying pact whose exact contents still eluded me. Frustration built inside me until I wanted to scream. “What else does it say?”
He tilted his head. “You really don’t know.”
“No!”
For a moment, he stared at me with an expression I hadn’t yet seen on him, like I