Page 117 of Devil

The complicated smile uncomplicates itself. Her eyes are soft. “It is better now, Ry. I only wish we could do it over and skip the pain we don’t want and only keep the pain that we do. I wish we could go back to the studio that day and you could feed me pomegranate seeds before kissing me.”

Christ, the memory of feeding her the pomegranate seeds. My exhausted body betrays what it felt like to watch her eat them all those years ago. Wet, sweet, sliding. Juice on her fingers and on her chin. Her tongue pink against the ruby seeds.

Birdie bites her lip. And then turns and walks out of the studio.

I’m currently strapped to a cross with a massive erection after bringing up the worst day of her life that I’m the cause of, and it does occur to me to feel a little nervous about being left alone like this, but it’s so unlike Birdie that I’m mostly just curious rather than concerned.

She does come back—she was only gone a minute maybe—and she has something small in her hand. She gets to the stepladder, and I can see that it’s one of the glass containers of pomegranate seeds I make up for snacks.

She climbs up the stepladder and opens the container, tucking the lid into her back pocket. “I don’t want your blood sugar to drop,” she explains as she puts three or four seeds on her fingertips.

“Naturally,” I say a little weakly.

And then just like I did to her seven years ago, she presses the pomegranate seeds to my lips.

I accept them, closing my lips around her fingers and sucking a little as she pulls them free. The seeds are bright on my tongue, deeply sweet and very tart.

She feeds me more, her eyes on my mouth, at where I suck at her fingers, where I lick shamelessly at them, and her breathing is speeding up, her cheeks flushed.

“I think,” she says, sounding nearly out of breath as she offers me more seeds, “that I see the appeal.”

Her fingers are dripping with pomegranate juice, and it drips onto my chin and then onto my chest, where it trails down and down still.

Her eyes track the movement, watching until it reaches the waistband of my trunks, where a very obvious erection waits, trapped in place by the fabric. With undisguised fascination, Birdie reaches out and strokes along its length, making me jolt against my restraints. And then she sets the pomegranate seeds down on an upper rung and uses both hands to peel my trunks down my body, a task made harder by the fact that my legs are bound together. She can only get them to mid-thigh.

She strokes me again now that I’m bared, skin on skin, and I shudder. She goes slow and light, teasing me with cruelty I wouldn’t have thought her capable of, and there’s nothing I can do about it with my arms spread and cinched tight and my ankles bound to the wood.

“You’ve really been thinking about me for nine years?” she asks as a single fingertip drifts over my slit.

Jesus.

“Yes,” I choke.

My balls are cupped as she uses the thumb of her other hand to make torturous passes up and down my frenulum. “You came to Evelyn for me?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve wanted me all this time?”

“I’velovedyou all this time.” The words are tattered and rough; she’s got me in her fist now. “It was only ever you.”

“When we first started and you talked about getting married…”

“Married to you,” I breathe. “I’d never marry anyone else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I’d let you—” I gasp as she starts using both hands to work my cock. “Discover the stalker parts—in installments?—”

She looks up at me, blue eyes and a doll’s mouth, the sunlight catching those scattered strands of silver among the copper.

“Does it upset you?” I ask. It’s another dimension to what I’ve just broached with her. Another violation.

Slowly and with an expression of something like regret, she shakes her head. “I know it should. Just like I know the forged signature should upset me more. Just like I know the whole pretense of our year together should. But I never hoped for honesty…only that maybe you could one day love me the way I love you.”

She leans forward, and I’m not sure what she’s doing until?—

“Fuck, Birdie,” I groan. “Suck on it. Oh my God.”