Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) - By Killian McRae Page 0,61

prove to me that you aren’t in danger if left alone together. Look each other in the eyes and say honestly that you don’t care for each other.”

Marc nodded and gave a conciliatory wave of his hand. “Go ahead, my child,” he invited, pivoting in his chair and staring the witch head on.

The comment was the last spark she needed. Her cheeks flared. “I don’t care AT ALL for you.”

“Good, I believe that. Now, Marc?”

The priest stood, folding his hands in front of him, and spoke in the softest mumble. “I pray for your soul, my child.”

Dee reached across the table and slapped the priest in the arm, making the latter flinch. “That’s not what I said, ass.”

Wiping away the sting in his bicep, Marc refocused, and let out in a deflated huff, “Idon’tlove… Aw, fuck it.”

And with that, he was out the door before his words hit.

Riona watched the door close with amazement. Dee grimaced with frustration.

The priest couldn’t do it. It would have been a lie. And while Dee was certain that lying, while frowned upon by the church, was not a cardinal sin that would forsake his moral code, both Riona and he understood despite all that, Marc was unable to forsake his own heart.

“You win, Dee,” Riona conceded. “I won’t be alone with Marc again.”

Chapter 19

It wasn’t as though Jerry expected a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, but a place to sit down for a few weary moments would have been nice.

Too bad Hell hadn’t signed on to the Geneva Convention. Unless you were a really high-level bigwig — a fallen angel or former Enron executive, for example — all you could hope for was a spare piece of brimstone to sleep on once in a while. Except if you somehow found yourself in the underworld’s penal system. Then you were put in a cell where your feet were magically cemented into the floor, causing your tortured muscles to stiffen painfully, before they began to atrophy. That is, until a guard demon passes by with a charm every few days to magically heal them, thereby resetting the cycle of anguish. Leaning against the bars, which were about six inches in front of him, was really the only relief Jerry’s spine ever got, so he did it whenever there was no overseer in view. (The guards got off by gnawing any appendages that poked through the cell bars.)

And the depravation didn’t stop at muscular mayhem. While down under, demons didn’t have a need for regular bodily functions like humans, so there were no shitty jail cell meals to tolerate. Eating was a regulated form of pleasure, one of the few afforded. And damn, what Jerry wouldn’t give for a Zima and a bag of Funyuns.

Oh, and just a few more minutes with Riona soil-side-up wouldn’t suck either.

It had been no small feat to secure a passport out of damnation on such short notice, and without any corporeal shell of his own anymore to materialize in the human realm, at that. But Jerry was a player, a swinger and a shaker. As a gnosis demon, it was his job to know stuff. Stuff that certain other demons and more useful to his situation, lesser fallen angels, didn’t want anyone to know. So what if Lucifer, upon learning of his transgression, had given him a permanent address on Hell Block C? To taste her lips again, to have gotten a chance for just a moment to hold her… Even as unsuccessful as he was at warning the witch that she was Satan’s latest pet project, the trip had so been worth the hell he was paying now.

He’d been told early on in his damnation that a demon was unable to love. Evil wiped away tenderness, they said, and Satan’s kitchens made sure to roast all the compassion from a soul when it arrived in the underworld. For centuries, he had believed it. Humans became silly creatures for him to work through a process, hardly anything more than cattle. When he set about his assignment to seduce Riona, first in body, then in the spirit, he knew he’d been given a golden ticket to becoming demon legend. Sure, he’d been a pretty high card in the devil’s deck for a long time, but it was the first time he’d been sent after a Pure Soul. Which, frankly, was a little surprising, given his unique qualifications.

But Riona’s compassion, Riona’s spirit… It was the first time in centuries that Jerry felt like he