The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,114

to give him my complete attention. "If she didn't think you were good enough, then she's a fucking idiot. Ron, I think you're amazing. You are the nicest, sweetest, and most considerate person I've ever met in my entire life. Even more than all the other guys in the legion. You are smart, and so amazingly beautiful. Yet, I can't help but wonder if you would still be like this if you'd been perfect. If you'd been the ideal creation that she was talking about, would you have ended up like the other angels?"

"Other? Sia, I'm still not an angel."

"But your twin is. Never mind that neither of you are like either pure angel or pure demon. You’re… I think you're kinda like me. You’re a little bit of everything all mixed up into one body, and maybe we’re a little bit fucked up because of it. Who cares?"

"I care!" he told me. "That's the whole point. I do care, because I just want to be good enough. Here you are being told that everything you were taught is evil - from having all of us to how horrible demons are, let alone your role in all of this - and you somehow just moved on from that like, I dunno, but you figured it out!"

"Yeah, I did." Reaching out to rub his leg, I begged him to look at me. "And the only reason I did was because of everything I've been through to get here. It started with being a pity case that no one wanted. Sound familiar? When I finally figured out that being abandoned was my parents' fault and not mine, then I had to deal with being a foster kid and all the baggage that goes with that. Then I was poor. After that, I was a twenty-four-year-old college freshman. Most people my age already had a degree. I was never what anyone thought I should've been, and I figured out that it doesn't really matter." I rubbed his leg again. "And you were kinda the last straw that made me stop worrying about it."

"What do you mean?" His eyes searched mine, hoping I could say something that would make him feel better.

"I was supposed to be bad at boyfriends. Sleeping around meant I was a slut. All the rules said that this life I have with my legion is wrong, but then you changed my mind. You showed me that what I was fighting so hard against was everything I’d ever wanted, and then you kissed me. Just a kiss, but no one cared. No one was mad at me for it, and that was when I realized that rules were meant to be broken."

"I thought you figured that out when you slept with Bel," he teased.

I bobbed my head from side to side, partially admitting that. "I still felt a little guilty for it, but I was trying. But when I kissed you, I didn't feel guilty at all. It actually felt, I dunno, right."

He ducked his head, but I could still see his cheeks turning pink. "So you're trying to say I should break the rules?" And he glanced up through his lashes to look at me.

"I kinda think we should all break the rules," I told him. "Fuck the rules, Ron. So what if you were God's prototype for life. Maybe you missed the part where it sounded like you were the first one she's ever created. In all dimensions - however she's defining that. You were the very first living thing ever. So what if you're not perfect? None of us are, and that's pretty much the best part. I happen to like your scars. I love the way that you never make me feel stupid. Ron, I just love you."

"I love you too, Sia, but this is a lot to take in." He reached out for my hand, then looked at his cup.

Without asking, I lifted his coffee from his fingers and set it beside mine. Then I moved higher on the bed and patted the spot beside me. That was all he needed. Ron crawled his way across the mattress to flop down with his head on the pillow, facing me. I stretched out to join him, and he caught my hand to lace his fingers through mine.

"I like who I am," he assured me. "I really do. It's just that I always assumed that this was all an accident. That I’d been created by some fluke of