Demon Bound

along the length of his cock as he moved.
    “Oh,
fuck
!” Pete screamed out, trembling as another wave took her. Jack pushed her back down as she started to rise, gripping her shoulder and using it to lever himself for one last thrust.
    Jack felt himself come, and it bent him over, gasping, as he spent himself and spent himself again inside Pete. When he’d finished he stayed still for a moment, the two of them crouched, his chest touching her back and his arms around her waist.
    Pete moved at last, gently distancing herself and rolling over to pull up her panties. Jack sat back on his heels, his sight roiling and his heart speeding along at two hundred kilometers.
    “Fuck me,” he said finally. “I’d murder a fag.”
    Pete let out a shaky laugh. “Here.” She fished in her bag and handed him a new pack. Jack lit one for himself and offered one to Pete. She took it, her hand still shaking.
    “That was . . .” She inhaled too deep, coughed, exhaled a cloud of blue. “I never know what to say.”
    “Don’t say anything,” Jack said, unkinking his legs and stretching out in front of the fire. He shot Pete a grin. “I’m just getting started, luv.”
    Pete’s lips parted, and her next draw on her fag was positively pornographic. “Are you?”
    “Do I ever make a promise I don’t keep?” Jack asked her. For just a moment, the length of his burning cigarette, he allowed himself to believe he hadn’t made a royal mess of his good intentions, that Pete was still safe and that he could stay with her long as he pleased.
    Then Pete flicked away her fag and moved into his lap again, and it didn’t matter any longer.

Chapter Nineteen
    Thin gray morning light lay across his face when Jack woke, fingerlets of silver reaching through the moth-eaten drapes. His neck was stiff from passing out against the hard feather pillows, but the rest of him was warm and content to float between sleep and waking.
    Slowly, so he wouldn’t wake her, Jack twisted to look at Pete. She slept curled on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek and her bare shoulder exposed where the coverlet slid off.
    Jack pressed his lips to the spot and then levered himself out of bed, grabbing Pete’s pack of fags on his way to the loo. He lit one, took a piss, and looked out the uncurtained window at the morning. Mist hugged the grass and moisture filmed the windows of the Mini. He couldn’t see beyond the gates. The moor had vanished in the fog.
    A reflection moved behind him in the window glass and Jack looked sharply at the bathroom door. Smoke stung his eyes as it drifted.
    The demon grinned at him. “Caught you with yourknickers down, Winter.” It held Jack’s denim on the crook of its index finger.
    Jack tugged on the rusty chain of the ancient loo and flicked his fag butt into the water. “See something you like, mate?”
    “Don’t play the happy sod with me, Winter,” the demon purred. “Your lady-love is asleep in the next room, after all.”
    “If you touch her you’ll be dust before you draw your next breath,” Jack promised. The fear had fled with the light and left in its place a flat, hard resolve. The detritus of a retreating tide, sitting jagged in his chest.
    Jack Winter wasn’t a man who got dragged to Hell and tortured. Not when the Black was trying to devour a friend, because friends were a rare enough commodity in his life as to be practically mythic.
    “You think you stand a chance?” the demon asked, head tilting to catch the beam of morning on its waxy skin, like sunlight touching the face of a corpse with a torn shroud.
    “I may not beat you,” Jack said, pulling a little magic to him from the bones of the house. “But I’ll fight you, tooth and nail.” The magic slithered and thrashed, unwilling to be caught. Jack grimaced. It might be a short fight. Many poor sods had the idea just before the end to fight, to cheat, to wriggle free of their bonds, but Jack wagered that none of them were quite as desperate as he. Desperation counted for much, when you dealt with demons.
    “You’re a bit peevish, aren’t you?” the demon said. “Not even a proper hello, just moaning and whingeing as usual.” Its gaze drifted past Jack and landed on Pete’s form in the bed, her bare skin pale as the morning light and hair dark as ink spilled on it. The demon’s lips parted. “Was the little Weir slut not everything you hoped for?”
    “I’m only going to say this once,” Jack told the demon.