Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,33

sensuous lips curved into wistful smile. “Cafeterias. But the food was good.” He noticed that she’d taken off her boots, and he did the same. The polite gesture both amused her and left her off balance. No one in Sheoul was polite. Ever. “It wasn’t always that way, though. When I first got to Sheoul-gra, it was a wreck. It was like living in a Tim Burton movie. The Nightmare Before Lilliana.”

“The what?”

He chuckled and took in the demon version of cave paintings on the walls that she’d cover up if she wasn’t worried about awakening some ancient curse or something. “Life before Azagoth met his mate was way different than the way it is now. Lilliana’s awesome.”

The sad note in his voice knocked a few bricks out of the wall she was trying really hard to build around her heart. Evil wasn’t doing it nearly as quickly as she’d like.

“You really miss Sheoul, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Another brick took a tumble, and that was enough of that. Time to shift gears and subjects.

“Well, I can’t do anything about that,” she said, “but I can get you your own place. Since I’m still in charge of you, you’ll take the apartment next door. Bael had it warded so you can enter but you can’t leave through the main entrance.” She gestured to the narrow door at the back of her place. “You have to use the doorway connected to mine.”

“Are all of these hive-holes connected?”

“Yep.” She padded past the bed and headed toward the icebox in the kitchen. She could get a real fridge, but unlike most of the other apartments, hers didn’t have electricity.

“How do you keep other people out?” Cipher’s footsteps followed behind her. “Wards, I’m guessing?”

“You guessed right. Are you hungry?” Bending over, she opened the little icebox and pulled out a couple of bludbeouf wraps she’d picked up yesterday at one of the local markets. “These are kind of like human gyros, except they’re made with demon cows. And maybe a little hellrat—”

She broke off when she straightened and caught Cipher staring at her ass. And he didn’t even have the decency to pretend that wasn’t what he was doing. Instead, he gave her a cocky grin that made heat spread through her pelvis and suspicion spread through her brain.

“What?” he asked, all innocence and charm. “You asked if I was hungry.”

She handed him the sandwich and tossed hers to the table. “I’m not buying it.”

“What? That you have a fine ass?”

“I’m not buying...this.” She gestured to all of him, down to his bare feet. “You’re being too nice. Bael had you tortured for months. He forced you to betray your friends and ex-boss, and now you’re standing in my apartment with a hard-on and a bad boy smirk? Do you really expect me to believe you’re just falling in line like a good little minion of Satan?”

“Revenant,” he said as he unwrapped his food.

“What?”

“Revenant is king now.” He poked at a dripping shaving of meat hanging from one end of his wrap. “You should have said minion of Revenant.”

Not if Bael and Moloc have their way.

“Whatever. What’s your game, Cipher?”

Suddenly, her spine was kissing the wall and Cipher was kissing her neck, and where the hell was his sandwich?

“My game,” he growled against her throat, “is called Stay Alive. And that means feeling alive. It means taking pleasure where you can so you can survive the shit when it hits. And after seven months of shit, I have one hell of a pleasure deficit.”

He was lying. Oh, as his hands tugged her close and his lips sucked at the tender skin at the crook of her shoulder, she knew he was being honest about what he’d said. But he wasn’t telling the entire truth.

He was distracting her from the truth. He was biding his time until he could either earn his freedom, make his escape, or get revenge before the evil of Sheoul took the choice from him.

And the thing was, she didn’t care, because he was right. She needed to feel alive. Needed to fuel up on pleasure, because the bad down here was really bad.

Lifting her leg, she hooked it around his thigh. The hard bulge behind his fly rocked against her center as he undulated slowly, a masculine body wave that drove a tingle of excitement from her scalp to her toes. Damn, he was good at this. They hadn’t even started and every feminine instinct she had was on board and demanding more.

Cipher