Page 123 of Devil

Want that only I can slake. Villainy that begins and ends with me.

As if he knows I’m thinking of him, his eyes find mine across the courtyard. Hunger flashes over his face, fast and hot, before he regains control and looks back at the person talking to him.

“He’ll be mayor one day if he wants the job,” Zenny says, shaking her head and sliding a plate of fruit closer to her on the table and offering it to Lali, who takes a strawberry with an air of wounded surrender. “The hype has been steady for a couple of years now, and the shelter is getting so much good press. All he has to do is actually start working toward it.”

“He wants to,” I say, thinking of all that imagination, that clarity, that keen sense of justice. Who would know better about justice, after all, than a wicked man? “But he’s told me he’s not interested in anything that would worsen my anxiety. I’m more comfortable with the possibility of being perceived than I was a year ago, and I think he’d be so good at it, so I want him to do it. I’ll adopt the role of the mysterious artist wife and hide from it as much as possible when the time comes, though.”

Ry says something to Elijah and then to the mayor, then slips out of the group. He walks toward me through the courtyard, his smile changing the slightest bit as he does, getting just a little sharper. The smile of someone who might sayI like transgressionand then feed you waffles after.

Zenny offers another strawberry to Lali. “I think he’d be good at it too. The other brothers…they’d be good at the gentle parts—helping people, fixing the potholes, that kind of thing—but even Sean would struggle with the more ruthless necessities of leadership, the conflicting needs. Ryan could deal with those necessities with a handshake and a smile and make it seem like there are never any hard feelings in local politics, none at all.Andhe won’t be too brokenhearted to try again when his plans don’t work out.”

Ry is passing by the fountain now, checking his pocket watch before slipping it back into his pocket. His wedding ring—wood that I hand-turned before it was inlaid into rose gold and titanium—gleams with the movement, and a possessive satisfaction curls in my chest.

“That’s the easy part for him, because he doesn’t actually have a heart.” I say it lightly, a joke, but Zenny just shakes her head.

I glance over at her to find that she’s watching Ry as he watches me.

“He has a heart, Birdie,” she says. She puts her hand over mine. “It’s sitting right here next to me.”

BELL

My wife nibbles at her lower lip as I start steering her to the other side of the room. “Are you sure it’s okay if we leave?” she asks nervously. “I don’t want to be rude.”

“We’ll only be gone a moment,” I cajole.

Seeing her doubt, I take her by the shoulders and gently spin her so she can see the reception in full swing: Aiden and Sean dancing with the kids, Tyler and Poppy and Father Brady sitting at a table while Tyler rubs the bare feet Poppy has propped in his lap. Paxico and my dad with a half dozen beer bottles between them, Busy and Amber talking about community college like they have been all day. Busy has been thinking about taking a class next semester, and Amber’s taking three after Birdie connected her with a scholarship for single parents—which, in a happy coincidence, is administered by my architecture firm.

“See? Everyone’s having a great time. Which meansweshould get to have a great time—alone.”

The war in her face is so adorably plain. It’s her innocence and her inborn resistance to corruption that fascinates me, but it’s that commiserate shadow in her thatobsessesme.

She lets the shadow win.

“Okay,” she whispers, taking my hand, and together we slip through tables and guests until we’re to a tucked-away door leading to a marble-walled gallery. I open the door and, with a quick glance around, lead Birdie inside. I pull her through the empty room in a half run, a soft clatter of heels and dress shoes.

Birdie laughs, sweet and surprised, at our sudden sprint, and the sound makes me feel like a king. The minute we’re through the doorway, I sweep her into a kiss, seeing if I can taste some of that laughter for myself.

“I forget that you don’t know how much fun it is to break the rules,” I murmur. I have the back of her head cradled in my palm, less worried about preserving the pretty little chignon she’s worn today now that the pictures are over.

She smiles up at me and then uses the arms laced around my neck to pull me down for another kiss. “It’s good that I have you to teach me then.”

“So glad you said that. I have another rule for us to break…”

I move us deeper into the dimmed galleries, kissing her every time she starts worrying about getting caught, hushing her in between kisses.

Finally we get to a room out of the way enough that I think we’ll be safe for some knowing of the biblical kind. We stop in front of a statue of the Madonna and child and then look up to see a life-size Christ mounted to the wall, in the pose of crucifixion but without his cross. There’s a stylized serenity to him, opened arms, closed eyes, his limbs carved in such a way that smooths over any trauma, any pain.

“Do you think whoever modeled for this got some of the same perks I did?” I ask, sliding a sly smile over at my new wife.

Birdie looks at me with one of her raised-cheek smiles, her eyebrow lifted a little. “Are you trying to update your terms? Claim some of the perks are standard so you can ask for more?”

“Oh, I think my terms are already quite to my liking,” I purr, pulling her close again, close enough that she can feel where I’ve been getting hard for her. I chose this vintage suit because I like classic silhouettes, but it was also convenient cover for the day. I knew watching her walk down the aisle to me—putting a ring on her finger and kissing her and feeding her cake—wasn’t something I’d be able to endure without a physical response. And now that I have her alone…

She slides her fingers into my hair and strokes over the skin just behind my ears with her thumbs. It feels amazing. “What terms? As a model? Or as a husband?”

“Both, although I’ve only been a husband for a few hours now. I might need to review what’s on offer.”

I don’t give her any warning, taking her by the hips and turning her so she’s facing the wall of short statues. I reach around her and place her hands flat on the plinth the statues rest on, a position that makes her bend at the hips and her skirt pull tight.