Page 72 of Devil

I quickly button and zip as he licks his fingers, and I can’t resist staring for a moment at the picture he makes, at those strong, harmonious features in silhouette against the car window, at his long fingers and his sensual mouth. His fluttering lashes as he sucks my taste off his own skin.

I unbuckle myself and then push into the back seat, where the new pet carrier contains the tiny beast from the studio last night. I ignore the flutter in my chest—ourpet carrier,ourtiny beast—and try not to think of the future and what the end of our arrangement will bring. Shopping for food and a cat bed and cat toys last night had been…painfully wonderful. Dizzying in its sweet ordinariness. Like Bell and I were a real something, like I was actually his girlfriend, like this was a lasting happiness we were creating together. It was the kind of wonderful that could only be matched by the cheerless dread of knowing it wasn’t real and that it would end, neatly and completely. It would be over in a time so short that I’d be able to measure it in bags of cat food.

And that thoughtshouldbe comforting. Ishouldbe soothed by remembering that my strange, semicaptivity is bounded and finite.

It shouldn’t make me feel so forlorn.

“It’s a wool and gabardine blend, and ithappensto be a light camel,” Bell is saying as I unzip the carrier and start stroking the kitten’s downy head, “but these are tailored, high-waisted trousers, cut to a 1930s silhouette, not cut for someone who has a dual monitor setup. Calling themkhakisis a tragic disservice. I can’t believe I made you waffles this morning, and this is how I’m repaid.Khakis.”

This makes me smile despite my unhappy thoughts. “As if I could stop you from making waffles,” I murmur. They’re a weakness of his, the waffles. He’s a clever and competent cook, making most of our dinners unless I fight him on it, and I generally don’t because it’s so, so nice to be cooked for, cared for, to eat flavorfully, with leisure and laughter and sparkling eyes over a highball or a coffee mug. And generally, his breakfasts, lunches, and snacks are a doctor’s dream—lots of protein, lots of vitamins. Cruciferous vegetables and berries and chicken. But the waffles…he can’t help himself. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes for a midday snack. More than once, I’ve woken to him working out his lust inside my body, and then afterward, he’ll leave and the smell of frozen waffles heating up will drift upstairs. He always brings up two for me, with peanut butter and honey, cut into wedges just like his.

“I’m a growing boy, I need my waffles. And you need to keep up your energy so you can take care of this new monster of ours. Speaking of, is Lilith okay?”

Lilith—so named for the biblical screech owl of the waste—had stopped yowling the moment I started petting her and is now purring as loudly as the truck’s engine, trying to butt and rub against my fingers. “She’s fine,” I say, smiling down at her. “She just wants my attention.”

Bell sighs. “I wouldn’t know how that feels.”

“So it crawledinto your house from thestreet?” Sean, the oldest Bell brother, is watching Lilith explore his gleaming wooden staircase with her trademark meowing outrage. Sean’s arms are folded, his expression appraising, save for the slight curl in his upper lip. He doesn’t seem to be an animal guy. “Is it…sanitary? Like to have inside?”

“She came in through an open window, Sean. We didn’t fish her out of a pile of used needles,” Bell replies. “And we took her to the vet this morning. After they checked for a chip, they tested her for everything and gave her a clean bill of health. And now she’s ours.”

At the wordours, Sean’s appraising glance flicks over to me, although his expression has tempered itself into something more host-ly. He was welcoming and gracious when I arrived, introducing me to his father, his brother Aiden and Aiden’s husband, Elijah, and a roving band of children ranging from ages five to eleven. His wife, Zenny, he told me, would be here any minute, but a delivery was keeping her at work later than planned. He was excited to meet me because I was the first person Ryan had ever brought to dinner and he hoped I liked steak and potatoes because that was all he knew how to make, and he hoped I would tell him all about how Bell and I started dating.

It wasn’t threatening—he’d thrown in a gossipy grin and a wink as he said it—but I’d felt the gravity of our strange fake relationship pressing in on me all at once.

I’d coped with the introductions as best I could, trying not to betray the anxiety that had gripped me the moment we walked into Sean’s lovely old house and I’d understood in a way that I hadn’t before that I was meeting several brand-new people and that they would see me as either a potential new family member or as an unwanted interloper. Neither role was one I felt capable of quietly enduring without needing to hide at some point.

But Bell had been touching me the entire time—a hand between my shoulder blades or at the small of my back, a kiss to my shoulder—and it also helped that Sean, Aiden, and their dad all looked so much like Ryan, Sean especially. His eyes were a darker blue and he lacked Bell’s curls, but they shared the carved jaw and straight nose, the smile and the dimples. Their eyebrows were the same. They even had the same arrogant swagger in the way they moved and talked.

There is a thundering of feet down the stairs, and suddenly Lilith is surrounded by interested faces and hands, and she responds predictably with plaintive yowls that seem impossibly loud for her small lungs.

Bell easily slides into the fray, fetching Lilith up to his chest with one hand and hugging his youngest nephew, Lali, with the other while the other kids plead and bounce on the steps around him, demanding a turn holding her. He smiles down at them, his thumb rubbing soothing circles along Lilith’s side, and says, “Well, the vet did tell us she needs lots of cuddles while she’s little to help her grow. But we have to be careful, because she’s not an ordinary cat, you see. They did all sorts of special tests, and it turns out that she’s not a regular cat.”

“She’s not?” Josie’s eyes are wide.

Bell nods seriously down at him. “She’s made of clouds, actually. See, touch her ear—very gently. Do you feel how soft she is? That’s because this kind of cat comes from the mountains, where the clouds are very, very close, and sometimes, during very big storms when the clouds are darkest and there’s thunder and lightning, the clouds will leave something behind. Like Lilith.”

Caro and Amani, the oldest of the kids, exchange a look.Bullshit, the look says.

Martina, the next oldest, seems to be on the fence. “Kittens come from mama and papa cats,” she says, but a little uncertainly. Like there’s an openness to being persuaded there, and Bell doesn’t miss it.

“The clouds use the mama cats to help grow the cloud kittens,” he says smoothly. “That’s how the cloud kittens learn to be snuggly and also how to climb and meow and all the things that clouds can’t do that cats can. But we can never forget that Lilith is made of clouds, andthatmeans we must be very, very careful when we pet her, right? Because clouds are so soft and you’re so strong. So you have to touch her as gently as you’d touch a cloud.”

“Right,” Lali breathes from where he’s clinging to Bell’s side. “We’ll be careful.”

Josie nods eagerly. “We promise, Uncle Ryan.”

Bell tosses a wink over at Caro and Amani, and they go from ready to reveal his lies to playing along.

“I learned about cloud kittens in school, Martina,” Amani says. “It’s a third-grade thing. You’ll learn it too.”

As the oldest, Caro seems to have appointed herself as the cloud caretaker, and she accepts the meowing Lilith from her uncle with great solemnity. Together, the kids go down the stairs and into the living room—Lali only after one last hug from Bell—and we hear lots of whispers andawwws and shushes and decisive directions from Amani about exactly how to pet a cloud.

Bell’s eyes find me right away, and he looks so satisfied with himself. And the way he looked with the children crowded around him, the obvious affection and confidence, like it’s never occurred to him that it might be hard to be good with kids, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to take five nieces and nephews and turn them into a self-ordering cloud protection society.

And then his smug expression changes, blooms—his sharp-edged lips curving, the creases in his cheeks deepening—and now he’s smiling at me like I’ve just agreed to give him a kidney.

Which is when I realize that I was smiling at him first, a small, bashful smile with my lips pressed together and my cheeks hot and my fingers knotted behind my back.