Demon Bound

passion—but that it hadn’t been between them. Never shared, and so never flourishing.
    What a rare and wonderful feeling it was when it did flourish. And so very frightening.
    She only had to move her hand a few inches to touch him. It had never been difficult before—but before, there had always been a reason: to teleport, to comfort him, to steady herself, out of need and arousal.
    Now, when it was simply because she wanted to, when it was only because it would please her, she hesitated.
    In her marriage, she had touched Henry easily, without thought—coming up behind him to kiss his neck while he sat in his dressing room, linking arms when they went walking. That playful, innocent contact had been permissible between a man and his wife.
    And she’d seen the ease with which Jake and the novices exchanged friendly kisses and embraces, his familiarity with Charlie and Selah. Why could she not do the same?
    He would likely never know the courage it took to slide her hand across the marble and rest her palm in the crook of his elbow.
    Or perhaps he would. He stilled, and raised his forearm from his face to look at her. She held his gaze, willing him not to say anything.
    He moved her hand from his elbow to his palm, clasped her fingers, and turned onto his side. “Listen, Alice. There’s something we haven’t talked about, but we need to.”
    Oh, dear. “There is?”
    “Yeah. About your bargain.”
    “Oh.” She frowned, and came up on her elbow. “There is?”
    His gaze was direct. “There’s still a trade we could make: me. If Belial ordered Teqon to release you from your bargain—”
    “No.” She yanked her hand from his. “Do not even speak of it.”
    “I am speaking of it. We could put a time limit on my service to Belial, say fifty years of—”
    “No!” Alice fisted her hands in her hair, closed her eyes as if she could shut him out.
    He fell silent. But only for a moment. “Okay, then there’s something else we could try. We’d intended to use Belial’s demons to get information about the prophecy. We’d have to go a lot further with Teqon, but I’ll do it.”
    Her lungs seized up. He meant that they could torture Teqon. And not anything like what they’d have done to Belial’s other demons—those, she and Jake would have frightened, threatened, perhaps stabbed once or twice while subduing them. But they wouldn’t have done more than that. If the demons had remained silent, they’d have been slain.
    They’d have slain them anyway.
    But Teqon . . . would take more than subduing. He had the advantage of knowing they would never go far enough to kill him, and that he would heal from anything they devised. It would have to be so terrible that he would beg for mercy, beg to release her. It would have to be like something from the Pit: slow, relentless, excruciating.
    And inhumane.
    “You cannot,” she said quietly. No one with even a little compassion could stomach that sort of torture. And if Jake forced himself through it, he couldn’t walk away undamaged by the experience. “Even to a demon.”
    “I will. You asked me once what I’d do if I had to make a choice. I can tell you now, my choice would be helping you.”
    “No.” She drew a shaky breath. “If it has to be done, I should do it. And perhaps I could use my Gift to open myself to my widows so much that I would not feel any soft emotion.”
    His voice was oddly flat. “Could you come back from that?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “There’d be no point to freeing you if you just became a freak spider woman who wouldn’t care if her soul was trapped in Hell anyway. And what if we have celebration sex afterwards and you bite off my head?”
    “You said it was a good way to die.”
    “Well, yeah, I say a lot of stupid stuff.” His gaze searched hers. “We don’t have to decide this second. But we should keep it in mind. At this point, I don’t see many other options.”
    Neither did Alice. She stared down at the marble, at her fingers trembling against the stone. And then cried out in surprise when Jake pushed her onto her back and came down over her.
    His jaw was clenched, his expression tight, but warmth spilled from the blue glow of his eyes. “Scream,” he ordered.
    “What?”
    “Scream.”
    “You cannot be—”
    “Just for practice.”
    “It won’t help.”
    “Oh yeah?” He caught her wrists, pushed them over her head. “Try it.”
    She didn’t know whether to laugh or to hit him. “If I