was hot and salty, sweetly bitter. I swallowed it all, sucking every last drop from his shaft before I popped him from my mouth and smiled up at him, light-headed and weak with pleasure.
“There’s my good little doll.”
I couldn’t get up, so he came down to me, wrapping me up in his arms where I finally went limp.
Calm fell over us, punctuated by the fire on my skin. I stared up at him, my breathing slowing, then stopping completely when he leaned down and kissed my lips.
I didn’t expect to feel tenderness from that wicked mouth.
The evening light was dim beneath the trees, almost dusk. The scent of the pines, the rattle of the aspen leaves in the wind, and the smell of rich damp earth all took me straight back to my childhood. Running through these woods. Digging my hands into the dirt. Watching squirrels scamper up the trees.
“I’ve missed coming out at night,” I said softly. Leon was nearby, behind me, leaning against a trunk. He’d walked with me into the trees, arm around my shoulders, silent now that he’d gotten all of his anger out of his system. There was a spot on the property back behind the cabin, where a massive pine had fallen years before I was born, and the carcass still laid there, covered in moss and lichens. I was perched up on it, my booted feet knocking against the wood as I swung my legs. I heard the flick of a lighter, and sour scent of pot wafted through the air.
Were all demons such stoners? It wasn’t as if Leon acted high. If anything, his moods went from a dangerously quiet calm to raging impending-apocalypse.
“So you have been listening to me,” he said. “You’re safe to go out after dark, as long as I’m here. Unless the Eld beasts get particularly bold, they won’t come back around with me near you. They’ve learned I’m dangerous.”
I stared into the trees as my feet swung, as if my eyes could permeate the dark. How did humans ever survive before electricity, before fire? How did we ever make it out of the dark?
Probably by having far better survival instincts than me. I’d been running blindly into the dark for years, screaming into it, waiting for an answer.
“I used to go walking at night all the time in California,” I said. “We lived close enough to the beach that I could walk down a few blocks and listen to the waves. When the moon was full and the fog rolled in, I’d sit out at the pier for hours.”
I glanced back at him. The cherry-red tip of the joint in his mouth flared in the dark, casting an orange glow across his face. “Where is your family now?” he said. “You moved here alone.”
“Spain. My dad finally retired and my mom’s side of the family lives there. They have a house in some gorgeous coastal city now.” I laughed, a little bitterly. “I could have gone with them. They wanted me to. But I had to be independent.” I air-quoted around the last word. “What a different time that would have been.”
Something that could have been a frown flickered across his face, then disappeared just as quickly. “Then your father’s family is from here?”
“I was born here. Stayed here until I was seven, then we moved down to California. My grandparents moved around the same time we did. Now my Grams lives in Colville after Papa passed.”
“You should visit her. I’m sure she misses you.”
“You’re trying to get me to leave town.”
“Absolutely.”
My fingers plucked continually at a stubborn bit of moss on the trunk beneath me. The temperature had dropped rapidly as the sun set, and the chill made me shiver.
Leon motioned to me, curling his finger. “Come here.”
I hopped off the tree and went to his side, where he pulled me close against him and offered me the joint. His heat warmed me almost immediately, and he held the joint to my lips as I took a drag. “Did you like this place? As a child?”
“I thought Abelaum was magical as a kid,” I said. “I convinced myself that fairies lived in the forest. Right there.” I pointed at the fallen log, which was riddled with cracks and crevices, and little gaps beneath it where the moss made a curtain. “I used to come out here with cookie crumbs and little bottle caps full of honey, and I’d leave it for the fairies.”
“I’m sure they appreciated